Lawrence Wright on Larry McMurtry

Longing is a mood you always bump into with Larry McMurtry. The first of his novels that I read was Leaving Cheyenne, which is one long heartache on the part of two cowboys for Molly Taylor and her yearning for companionship and understanding. McMurtry wrote a sentence that I figured would stay with me the rest of my life: “A woman’s love is like the morning dew—it’s just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.” So true, I thought, as I was nineteen and loveless.