Watching them, Harmony felt too shaken to take a step. Eddie and Sheba were young; but she herself had become old. Even if she wasn’t particularly old if you just counted years, the fact was years were no way to count. Happenings were the way to count, the big happening that separated her from youth or even middle age was the death of her daughter, Pepper. That death made her realize that life, once you got around to producing children, was no longer about being pretty or having boyfriends or making money — it was about protecting children; getting them raised to the point where they could try life as adults. It didn’t have to be just children that come out of your body, either. It could be anyone young who needed something you had to give. Some grown men were children; some grown women, too. Harmony knew that she had spent a good part of her life, taking care of just such men. But now that she felt old she didn’t think she wanted to spend much more of her energy protecting men who had had a good chance to grow up, but had blown it. If she never had another boyfriend — something she had been worrying about, on the plane — it might be a little dull in some areas, like sexual areas, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. What would be the end of the world would be to let some little girl like Sheba get in the car with a bad man who would make a U-turn across the street and kill her right there in front of the pay phones, where pimps and crack dealers were making their calls. Larry McMurtry
Some Similar Quotes
  1. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger. - Unknown
  2. You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap... - Jeanette Winterson
  3. It’s the same with people who say, ‘Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn’t kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself... - Rob Sheffield
  4. She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life. - Unknown
  5. Why is the measure of love loss? - Jeanette Winterson
More Quotes By Larry McMurtry
  1. Great readers (are) those who know early that there is never going to be time to read all there is to read, but do their darnedest anyway.
  2. They probably think the sun won't come up unless you're there to allow it.
  3. I sing about life. I am happy, but life is sad.
  4. It was something, what must go through men's mind where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.
  5. The thought cross his mind that he ought to have married her and not gone rambling. If he had, he wouldn't be in such a fix. But he felt little fear; just an overpowering fatigue. Life had slipped out of line. It was unfair, it...
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