Max Evans Quotes

He ain't no cowboy, this Ed Love, but he is a cowman. ...He can dicker for six days and nights for one-fourth cent cent a pound for his beef. He can get more work from and give less pay to a cowboy than anybody I ever saw.

Jiggs, with his sharp, dark eyes smiling from a weather-seared face, used to say, "I tell you what, son, if a man is real lucky he'll find that what he wants to do is what he likes to do. That is, of course, if he's lucky enough to take the time to discover it."

I had my right hand around that saddle horn like it was the doorknob to heaven's gate, and my right elbow was crimped down over my hipbone like a vise. I was pulling on the them hackamore reigns like I was dragging a pot of gold out of a deep well. But it just didn't do any good. That son of a... bogged his head and jumped way off toward the Arizona border and came down hard on his front legs, driving them in the ground plumb to bedrock, the way it felt to me. The next jump was just as high and just as long, but when he drove into the ground again he was headed for the Texas border, and in between that old roan horse was sure tearing hell out of New Mexico.

I was having more trouble putting a rein, a stop, and instilling "rope and cow sense" in this horse than ever before. ...She literally loved and lived to run after the dogs as they ran down one of the smartest creatures ever born. She must have had the ancient genes of some great general's best war horse for she had a true blood lust. Molly loved to watch the dogs' fangs still a freshly caught coyote.

Jim Ed Love is a very funny name for a man who likes nothing better than to see a cowboy get what little he's got get kicked out by a rawboned, walleyed, bucking, ground-stopping bronc.

THE HORSE (and the mule—which is half horse) had given more to mankind than all the rocket scientists, presidents (all forms), dictators and financial geniuses with all their billions of dollars combined. The horse's hold on mankind, joining in all human glories and foibles, could actually fill many great libraries.

I could see... that there was healed-over spur marks in that old pony's shoulder. That could mean just one thing. Trouble. I had worked for outfits that gave spoiled horses like that one away just to keep from crippling up good cowboys.

Jiggs loved playing his old Victrola in the early evening and often asked Ty to sit with him and listen. The music wasn't always what Ty was exactly interested in, but he listened to please his grandfather. ...Accidentally he found out that reading was allowed while listening to great music. His grandparents had read to him regularly and insisted that Ty read some of the classics.

He looked just like a groundhog coming up for air when he crawled out of his bedroll in the morning, and he didn't look a hell of a lot better now... His legs was bowed so bad that if you was to straighten them up he would be twice as tall.

One from the Heart for... Those deeply loved and influential amigos and amigas who have gone on the "Long Adios", including my mother, Hazel, who taught me to read, and love it, before I started school. Wiley (Big Boy) Hittson, whose brief life of daring courage, total loyalty and sudden shocking death by gunfire inspired my novel TheHighLoCountry. Luz Martinez, the "Santero" who followed me to Taos and carved cedarwood into permanent beauty and dignity. Woody Crumbo, the great pioneer Pottawatomie Indian artist, who became my artistic and spiritual mentor and whose spirit is in every chapter of this book. And finally, our little dog Foxy...

We called them wrecks... And the great mystery in the sky does not allow you to have all that fun unless you have some wrecks.

I was amazed to discover my award-winning racehorse story, "Showdown at Hollywood Park," was a short sequel to the famed "Seabiscuit" story.
Also I had two more, over 90 percent true, stories that I slightly fictionalized... "My Pardner" was one of these. ...... loved "My Pardner." He optioned it many times over. ...I traded him "My Pardner" for so I could get a Martin Scorsese, ' film made. ...This book brought about the very last conversation I ever had with Peckinpah—two weeks before his untimely death. He was on his way to ... and pressed for time, but promised that on his return he would sign all film rights for "My Pardner" back to me. But... he died, and it never happened.

As beginning buddies do, Ty had casually mentioned that he'd overheard his grandfather saying to his grandmother, "That Ty is always running for the far horizon, but it keeps moving ahead of him," and Martha had answered as always in his favor, "Yes he is. And someday he'll catch it, and it'll be downhill from then on."

Silver City Millie contains sordid details and frank language that will make many readers blush, but before her bawdy, drunken life is condemned, readers must become aware of the full context of prostitution in the American West. It was like motherhood and apple pie. It was expected, condoned, appreciated, and segregated. ...The ratio of men to women in the frontier West was frequently seven to one.

For me, the code of the West is simple. You never let a friend down... ever. And you don't go after your enemies if they leave you alone.
You can live a long time on those two things.