Top 100 Larry McMurtry Quotes
#1. I still think we ought to just hire the town and take it with us. Then we'd have a good barkeep and someone to play the pianer.
Larry McMurtry
#2. He gathers information that we can't see, and puts it together.
Larry McMurtry
#3. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.
Larry McMurtry
#4. In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.
Larry McMurtry
#5. It didn't do to ignore men. The majority of them were harmless, with nothing worse than a low capacity to irritate - they were worse than chiggers but not as bad as bedbugs, in her view.
Larry McMurtry
#6. Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look surprised when he got kicked.
Larry McMurtry
#7. This is a damn useless conversation. Goodbye. (Charles Goodnight to Woodrow Call)
Larry McMurtry
#8. Best to help such boys have their moment of fun, before life's torments snatched them.
Larry McMurtry
#9. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK, SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.
Larry McMurtry
#11. She didn't know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn't want to touch it or even look at it.
Larry McMurtry
#12. Well, boys," Long Bill said. "I guess here's where I quit rangering. It's rare sport, but it ain't quite safe.
Larry McMurtry
#13. If I had a mind to rent pigs, I'd be mighty upset. A man that likes to rent pigs won't be stopped.
Larry McMurtry
#14. Looking at her, though, was like looking at the hills. The hills stayed as they were. You could go them, if you had the means, but they extended no greeting.
Larry McMurtry
#15. Do you know what it means to be heartbroken?...It means your heart isn't whole, so you can't really do anything wholeheartedly.
Larry McMurtry
#16. You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations.
Augustus "Gus" McCrae
Larry McMurtry
#17. Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.
Larry McMurtry
#18. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters
Larry McMurtry
#19. It was something he had always done - moved apart, so he could be alone and think things or a little.
Larry McMurtry
#20. There's nothing that sweetens the breath like a cedar toothpick, unless it's mint. And mint don't grow in these parts.
Larry McMurtry
#21. Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.
Larry McMurtry
#22. Part of him wanted to remember; part of him needed to forget.
Larry McMurtry
#24. Why hell yes, Joe Bob! A cripple can always get himself a wooden leg, or a glass eye, or a metal hook for a hand, or any of that mess
but there ain't no known substitute for a big dick. I guess you is out of luck!
Larry McMurtry
#25. If I'd have wanted civilization I'd have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,
Larry McMurtry
#26. Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough,
Larry McMurtry
#27. It's his dern laziness," Call said. "Jake just kind of drifts. Any wind can blow him.
Larry McMurtry
#28. Wantin' takes too much time ... I'd rather be working.
Larry McMurtry
#29. It was something, what must go through men's mind where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.
Larry McMurtry
#31. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.
Larry McMurtry
#32. Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed.
Larry McMurtry
#33. No half measures, he muttered several times. It was his personal motto; he intended to have it latinised and put on a crest.
Larry McMurtry
#34. Don't be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.
Larry McMurtry
#35. I don't know anything about babies," he said. "No, and you've never lived any place but Arkansas," Clara said. "But you ain't stupid and you ain't nailed down. You can live other places and you can learn about children - people dumber than you learn about them.
Larry McMurtry
#36. You're the only man I know whose brain don't work unless it's in the shade.
Larry McMurtry
#38. The thought crossed 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 was too bad, but he couldn't find the energy to fight it any longer.
Larry McMurtry
#39. I won't tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman.
Larry McMurtry
#40. In the last year or two he had not only grown indifferent to company, he had begun to find it irritating.
Larry McMurtry
#41. You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analogous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination.
Larry McMurtry
#42. I'd like to see you think the roof back on that barn," Call said.
Larry McMurtry
#43. I'd hate to read all these books ... that much reading could put your eyes out.
Larry McMurtry
#44. You don't look strong enough to trouble nobody around here ... We grow our own troubles
it would be a novelty to have some we ain't already used to.
Larry McMurtry
#45. There seem to be no way he could stop anything that was happening, although it all felt wrong.
Larry McMurtry
#46. Captain McCrae was wanting to know the answer to questions that had no answer.
Larry McMurtry
#47. The other men were easy to talk to, but they didn't know anything. If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetimes.
Larry McMurtry
#48. No matter how well he worked. It was a little discouraging: the harder he tried to please the Captain, the less the Captain seemed to be pleased.
Larry McMurtry
#49. He wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves. He didn't know.
Larry McMurtry
#50. They respected only the strong men who could not be insulted without a price being paid in blood.
Larry McMurtry
#51. I don't believe in protein," I said. "I think it's a myth, like vitamins. I don't believe in nutrition, in fact. I think it's all a myth.
Larry McMurtry
#52. Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius
Dostoyevsky perhaps.
Larry McMurtry
#53. You told me to stay," July said. "I know I did, son," Augustus said. "I'm sure you wish you had. But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back. Go on with your digging and I'll tidy up.
Larry McMurtry
#54. He had hit with his closed fist and knocked her sprawling. It took talent to make Wyatt lose his temper, but Jessie knew just how to do it, and did it mainly just to have something happening. Pouring whiskey from bottle to glass was boring work.
Larry McMurtry
#55. If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.
Larry McMurtry
#56. The smartest man alive can't learn much about a woman in two weeks.
Larry McMurtry
#57. They probably think the sun won't come up unless you're there to allow it.
Larry McMurtry
#58. passing insults back and forth, as if they were biscuits.
Larry McMurtry
#59. During the day he had not trusted enough, and had worn himself out with pointless scurryings.
Larry McMurtry
#60. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live." Call
Larry McMurtry
#61. Governors and legislators wanted the hostiles held in check and the bandits hung, but they wanted it all to be done with the fewest possible men on the cheapest possible horses. It irritated Call and infuriated Augustus.
Larry McMurtry
#62. Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.
Larry McMurtry
#63. Po Campo had given him a hailstone dipped in molasses and he sat licking it and feeling alternately happy and sad while the men got dressed and prepared to be cowboys again.
Larry McMurtry
#64. You are like me, a free man. The sky is your wife.
Larry McMurtry
#65. It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.
Larry McMurtry
#66. No, but I have passed the point in life where I expect to be satisfied," Augustus said. "At least I don't expect to be satisfied with much. When it comes right down to it, Woodrow, I guess my own cooking beats anything I've come across in this life.
Larry McMurtry
#67. A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.
Larry McMurtry
#68. Nobody run off with her," Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess.
Larry McMurtry
#69. I just got gang-egged, or egg-banged or something.
Sheriff Toots Burns.
Larry McMurtry
#70. Besides, though she considered herself his sweetheart, she didn't consider him her master.
Larry McMurtry
#71. When dawn spread its cool clear flush over the meadows and fields and thorny pastures to the north and east, Duane pulled an old lawn chair out of the cabin and sat down to watch, cradling a cup of coffee in his hands. It was chilly enough that he threw an old poncho over his lap.
Larry McMurtry
#72. At times he felt that he had almost rather not be in love with her, for it brought him no peace. What was the use of it, if it was only going to be painful?
Larry McMurtry
#73. He loved the way she smelled in the mornings; he liked to sniff at her shoulders or her throat.
Larry McMurtry
#74. I don't do well with changes in my routine. I read at least three newspapers a day, for example. I'm frustrated if for some reason I can't get ahold of all three.
Larry McMurtry
#75. The skinny ones last longer than the fat ones," Louisa said. "You'll probably last till you're about sixty.
Larry McMurtry
#76. I see you're in a hurry to get someplace. It's a great mistake to hurry." "Why?" Joe asked, puzzled by almost everything the traveler said. "Because the grave's our destination," Mr. Sedgwick said. "Those who hurry usually get to it quicker than those who take their time.
Larry McMurtry
#77. I'm a fastidious bookman and have never liked reading books with library markings or other messy defects.
Larry McMurtry
#79. It ain't a mistake to behave like a human being once in a while,
Larry McMurtry
#80. I needed a man," Call replied. "I was hoping he might turn out to be a fighter." "No, he's just a jailer," Billy said.
Larry McMurtry
#82. A chain of follies had put him there: Call's abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked.
Larry McMurtry
#84. It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.
Larry McMurtry
#85. People are always turning out to be tougher than I think they are.
Larry McMurtry
#86. Everyone who came to see him asked questions that were either stupid or impertinent. Better to see no one than to see fools.
Larry McMurtry
#87. She wasn't going to succeed in newspapers if she didn't ask the big questions when she could.
Larry McMurtry
#88. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.
Larry McMurtry
#89. We mostly quarreled. He wanted what I wouldn't give. I wanted what he didn't have.
Larry McMurtry
#90. I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night-spoken by Woodrow Call
Larry McMurtry
#91. I figured out something, Lorie," he said. "I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than you say and I say more than I know. That means we're a perfect match, as long as we don't hang around one another more than an hour at a stretch.
Larry McMurtry
#92. Pea Eye loped up and unfolded himself in the direction of the ground. "Your getting off a horse reminds me of an old crane landing in a mud puddle," Augustus said.
Larry McMurtry
#93. By far my most popular novel, and one that allows me to join the small company of "respectable" writers whose fiction deals with the American West: Cormac McCarthy, Walter Van Tilburg Clark, Tom Lee and a handful of others,
Larry McMurtry
#96. From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.
Larry McMurtry
#97. Many white men could not trust things unless they could be explained; and yet the most beautiful things, such as the trackless flight of birds, could never be explained.
Larry McMurtry
#98. We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That's the wild for you - it's got its dangers, which is part of the beauty.
Larry McMurtry
#99. The Western notion of masculinity goes back a long way. It doesn't allow for women, and it's also racist - it doesn't allow for other cultures.
Larry McMurtry
#100. Perhaps as he grew older he would learn to trust mysteries and not fear them.
Larry McMurtry
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
