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Max Evans (author) Quotes (1925-)
Author, Writer, Director
About Max Evans (author)
Max Evans (August 29, 1925) is the native New Mexico author, writer, and film director upon which the Slim Randles book, Ol' Max Evans: The First Thousand Years, and the 2018 documentary film of the same title are based. The 1998 film The Hi-Lo Country and the 1965 film The Rounders were based upon two of his many books.
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“For decades the old prospector had walked the sizzling southwestern deserts, climbed the jagged mountains, chewed the dust, dodged the blizzards without complaint or defeat.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“This was the most difficult book I have ever put together. No matter how I checked out some of the wild stories—wild by their locale, time of occurrence and nature of her business—they were not only unutterably true, but actually understated in some cases.”
“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 will now hope for the near impossible: that the essence of her bravery, the dedication and suffering she afforded those she loved, and above all that indomitable will to have a good laugh no matter where the stones fell, will be as indelible to the reader as they are to me.”
“Emilio said "I'm swearing you to secrecy, amigo, and I feel guilty for telling you... There is a secret room in our basement where both mom and dad go to worship in Jewish. They even light the menorah there during Hanukahh."
Ty made a zipping motion over his mouth and said, "It stays here, amigo."”
Ty made a zipping motion over his mouth and said, "It stays here, amigo."”
“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.”
“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."”
“One from the Heart for... My wife Pat, my number one critic, who also suffered safely through all those long decades of my taking notes, thinking and figuring on Bluefeather Fellini, and then the five and a half years of actually writing it down. ...Also, much appreciation for the painting you created for the cover.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“One from the Heart for... Frederico Fellini, the great director who taught me to feel the color, see the sound, and hear the unsaid in such great films as LaStrada, LaDolceVita, and 81/2.”
“When I was still a teenager, I acquired a small, well-watered (with springs) ranch in northeastern New Mexico. It was located fourteen miles east of the village of Des Moines—which I would later call "Hi-Lo" in my many writings and a major film. ...In those poor struggling days, coyote hides would bring from five to fifteen dollars—a ton of money at the time.”
“It was about three miles by bird travel to the gate opening into home pasture. That was where Old Fooler was headed. He was still bucking, and I could see those stirrups clanging together over his back. Then he disappeared over the rise and there wasn't a thing to keep me company but one little white cloud about a thousand miles off over the northern mountains. I saw that cloud when I looked up at the sky and asked the Lord to please not let me kill myself and to give me the wings of an angel so I could fly after that horse and break his ...dam neck.”
“He was always grinding on forward... Grinder... observed Bluefeather through slit, knowing eyes. The quality he looked for was definitely there. It... was obvious in the alert, almost regal, manner he carried his head and the way he climbed the Taos mountains with a long-stepped, but smooth, attacking stride. ...Bluefeather Fellini was from the people of yearning. Whenever one walks or rides with yearners, the world becomes generous with great gifts of almost ceaseless adventure—and makes one pay terrible prices for the ultimate joys. Grinder knew this... for he was a grinder himself.”
“Several times, Emilio had taken Ty to the mountains to fish for trout. ...The gurgling, forever-twisting little snowmelts coursing, playing, singing over millions of differently shaped stones deeply fascinated a young man from the dry, flat plains of Lea County. It was a gift of beauty sparkling in the sunlight to out glimmer all the diamonds in the world. ...He would have wagered on it. Emilio had introduced him to a ceaseless wonder. ...and the fishing was almost as exciting. He could never stop marveling that these small streams could be home to foot-long brown and rainbow trout.”
“On Glorietta Mesa south of Santa Fe, I went to work on a cow ranch about three months before my twelfth birthday. Almost everyone—in this time and place—was so poor that it was a common practice for ranchers to loan themselves and/or their hired hands out to help each other—especially with big jobs like branding and roundups, and even fence building. It made survival possible.”
Quotes About Max Evans (author)
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Robert Nott on Max Evans (author) 3 quotes
“I can see why the two men liked and admired each other. Max had been a cowboy, a soldier, a smuggler, a painter, and, most importantly, a storyteller. Sam had been a would-be cowboy, a soldier, a would-be smuggler, a director, and, most importantly, a storyteller. They were roughly the same age when they met up early in 1962, and they both achieved success in their respective fields—Peckinpah in film, Evans in literature—within a few years of each other. Perhaps Sam filled the void that the death of Big Boy Hittson... created for Max after Big Boy was shot by his younger brother in the late 1940s...”
Source on Max Evans (author) 2 quotes
“In the wondrous brew that makes up life, that novel, The Rounders, created a bittersweet effect on Max Evans' life. It made his reputation. Despite a lifetime of writing perhaps the finest literature ever written about life in the West, it is still this one book about two cowboys who can't seem to win but refuse to lose that people tend to remember best. It brought Max his first real money, his first real fame, his first movie.”
Note on Max Evans (author)
“[O]ne of [my] students said his father was a Santa Fe cop who had arrested Max for "cutting down all the stop signs in Santa Fe." Max later admitted going on a... mission... as a way of avoiding getting more traffic tickets... As he put it, "Hell, I didn't get more than half of them cut down before they caught me."”
About Max Evans (author)
Max Evans (August 29, 1925) is the native New Mexico author, writer, and film director upon which the Slim Randles book, Ol' Max Evans: The First Thousand Years, and the 2018 documentary film of the same title are based. The 1998 film The Hi-Lo Country and the 1965 film The Rounders were based upon two of his many books.