“Here. Eat some citrus fruit,” he said. “It’s good for what ails you.”
“Nothing ails me,” I said. “This is just the way I am.”
“Did you run away from the woman or did the woman run away from you?” he asked.
“Both,” I said. “Everything.”
—Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Liveright, 2018 (1972)
“I don’t have any real idea of her,” I said. “I don’t even know what I’m losing.”
Emma looked out the window. Tears came in her eyes. “You will, someday.” she said. “I guess you will, if you ever find out anything about what’s normal. I’ve always known personal things were desperate. Personal troubles. I’ve always know it. Seeing you last night almost destroyed me. I can’t even help you. It’s going to be hard for me even to be your friend now.”
“I know,” I said.
—Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Liveright, 2018 (1972)
I was very separated. My words got across to people, but it was all verbal. At a deeper level, some level of needs and responses to needs, I was separated from everybody.
—Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Liveright, 2018 (1972)
My life was scarcely a life at all, since she had left. She had educated me to certain qualities and properties that I hadn’t know before: the properties of food, of nice rooms and nice light and good colors, the pleasures of walking and looking at things with someone intelligent, new qualities of affection, the pleasures of talking. I had never done those sorts of things with a woman before. For a time I almost hated the concept of love and the fact of sex, because they were the missing ingredients that kept me for having all the other good things I wanted.
—Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Liveright, 2018 (1972)
She sounded hostile suddenly, and I felt hostile. We hadn’t been when we parted, not at all. I was surprised to feel so hostile. I had been brooding for days. I guess I blamed her for not making us work. I guess she blamed me for the same thing. When she told me she was leaving I had felt paralysed. I felt really helpless.
—Larry McMurtry, All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers, Liveright, 2018 (1972)