Top 100 Mcmurtry Quotes
#1. 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry and 'The Poisonwood Bible' by Barbara Kingsolver have stuck with me throughout my life, and I think that says a lot about an author's writing.
Tess Gerritsen
#2. James McMurtry is a true Americana poet - actually he is a poet regardless of genre
Michael Nesmith
#3. Listening to Eric Taylor is better than reading a Larry McMurtry novel and easier on the eyes.
Ralston Bowles
#4. 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
#5. I don't think you ever wanted to be happy anyway. It don't suit you, so you managed to avoid it.
Larry McMurtry
#6. Of course she teased the girls, but it was not the same as having a grown man to work on - she had often felt like pinching Bob for being so stolid. July was no better - in fact, he and Bob were cut from the same mold, a strong but unimaginative mold.
Larry McMurtry
#7. He gathers information that we can't see, and puts it together.
Larry McMurtry
#9. It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.
Larry McMurtry
#10. My main skills are talking and cooking biscuits,' Augustus said. 'And getting drunk on the porch.
Larry McMurtry
#11. His feet were swollen to twice their size, besides being cut here and there. Yet they were the only feet he had, and after dozing for an hour in the sun, he got up and hobbled on.
Larry McMurtry
#12. If you did a thing hoping a person wouldn't find out, that person always did.
Larry McMurtry
#13. But as far as trusting the general run of men, there was no need, since she had no intention of ever expecting anything from one of them again.
Larry McMurtry
#14. Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.
Larry McMurtry
#15. In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.
Larry McMurtry
#16. He was fairly drunk, and feeling melancholy about all the sinking he had done in the world. Throughout the rough years the Greek alphabet had leaked out of his mind a letter at a time - in fact, the candle of knowledge he had set out with had burned down to a sorry stub.
Larry McMurtry
#17. They don't know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend upon them.
Larry McMurtry
#18. 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
#19. If he didn't like the way she did things, he was free to do them different - but he never did them different. He just fussed at her.
Larry McMurtry
#20. What would you know about anything, Jasper?" Augustus asked. "Age don't slow a man's whoring. It's lack of income that does that. No more prosperous than you look, I wouldn't think you'd know much about it.
Larry McMurtry
#21. Don't be trying to give back pain for pain ... You can't get even measures in business like this.
Larry McMurtry
#22. 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
#23. it seemed he had to be talking every waking minute as a means of holding his own fears in balance.
Larry McMurtry
#24. It was inconsiderate, she thought, how blandly people mentioned the future in the sick rooms. Phrases like next summer were always popping out; people made such assumptions about their own continuity.
Larry McMurtry
#25. Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways.
Larry McMurtry
#26. It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added
Larry McMurtry
#27. The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.
Larry McMurtry
#28. I don't claim to know much: cards, fucking, and dentistry about covers it, Doc said.
Larry McMurtry
#29. She may know what I am, though," Lorena said.
"Yes, she'll know you're a human being. You don't have to duck your head to nobody. Half the women in this country probably started out like you did, workin' in saloons.
Larry McMurtry
#30. This is a damn useless conversation. Goodbye. (Charles Goodnight to Woodrow Call)
Larry McMurtry
#31. For most of the hours of the day - and most of the months of the year - the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tennesseans.
Larry McMurtry
#32. Best to help such boys have their moment of fun, before life's torments snatched them.
Larry McMurtry
#33. Well, I got to admit I still like a fight," Augustus said. "They sharpen the wits. The only other thing that does that is talking to women, which is usually more dangerous.
Larry McMurtry
#34. He had not stayed, but when he had gone, he hadn't fought, either. He had done nothing but ride twice over the same stretch of prairie, while death had come to both camps.
Larry McMurtry
#35. Her own folly amused her: she had once thought of herself as smart - but look at where she was.
Larry McMurtry
#36. Incompetents invariably made trouble for people other than themselves.
Larry McMurtry
#37. CHERFUL IN ALL WEATHERS, NEVER SHERKED A TASK, SPLENDID BEHAVIOUR.
Larry McMurtry
#38. But mash whiskey took some of the dry away and made Augustus feel nicely misty inside - foggy and cool as a morning in the Tennessee hills. He seldom got downright drunk, but he did enjoy feeling misty along about sundown,
Larry McMurtry
#39. Buffalo Hump knew his son was brave, but that was not enough. If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.
Larry McMurtry
#40. In the vastness of the desert, each reduction of the group made them realize how small they were, how puny, in relation to the space they were traveling through.
Larry McMurtry
#41. It's really quite simple. Mr. Isinglass robbed my father, destroyed my mother, exiled my brothers, and ruined me. If I catch him asleep I'll kill him. I do hope you like this pudding. I had to ride quite a way to find the plums.
Larry McMurtry
#42. It was as if his whole life had suddenly lodged in his throat, a raw bite he could neither spit out nor swallow.
Larry McMurtry
#43. Afterwards the members of the little war party felt fine. Torturing whites was a splendid way to spend the afternoon.
Larry McMurtry
#45. 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
#46. He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn't do barring a miracle.
Larry McMurtry
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. The seven of them rode for two hours into country that seemed to contain nothing except itself.
Larry McMurtry
#50. 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
#51. 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
#52. You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations.
Augustus "Gus" McCrae
Larry McMurtry
#53. 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
#54. You can scare off a lot of cowboys just by looking mean, I guess.
Larry McMurtry
#55. The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters
Larry McMurtry
#56. I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't much of a recommendation for it.
Larry McMurtry
#57. Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.
Larry McMurtry
#58. Monkey John looked at the dead boy. "By God, life is cheap up here on the goddamned Canadian River."
"Cheap," Blue Duck answered. "And it might get cheaper.
Larry McMurtry
#59. I sometimes think the sexual organs were put there to keep the human race humble," she said. "They've certainly kept me humble.
Larry McMurtry
#60. Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it's likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk - and
Larry McMurtry
#61. It was something he had always done - moved apart, so he could be alone and think things or a little.
Larry McMurtry
#62. 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
#63. Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.
Larry McMurtry
#64. Was necessary to ignore most of those Gus made or else you got bogged down in useless conversation.
Larry McMurtry
#66. I suppose she's just dying of living
that's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later.
Larry McMurtry
#67. Part of him wanted to remember; part of him needed to forget.
Larry McMurtry
#69. By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself.
Larry McMurtry
#70. -she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men.
Larry McMurtry
#71. Jake, you're a dern grasshopper," Augustus said. "You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today you're talking California.
Larry McMurtry
#72. 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
#73. If I'd have wanted civilization I'd have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,
Larry McMurtry
#74. Life makes everybody strange, if you keep living long enough,
Larry McMurtry
#75. I don't guess I've watched you punish yourself for thirty years to be totally wrong about you.
Larry McMurtry
#76. You know Deets is like me - he's not one to quit on a garment just because it's got a little age - spoken by Augustus McCrae
Larry McMurtry
#77. The family got nervous about blood poisoning and persuaded he and Call to saw it off.
Larry McMurtry
#78. It's his dern laziness," Call said. "Jake just kind of drifts. Any wind can blow him.
Larry McMurtry
#79. Wantin' takes too much time ... I'd rather be working.
Larry McMurtry
#80. There was said to be measuring of penises at the Orchid, but was it true and if so what did that mean?
Larry McMurtry
#81. It was something, what must go through men's mind where women were concerned, to cause them to behave so strangely.
Larry McMurtry
#82. He didn't feel sad. The one thing he knew about Texas was that he was lucky to be leaving it alive - and, in fact, he had a long way to go before he could be sure of accomplishing that much.
Larry McMurtry
#83. They sorry," Deets said. "Saying won't change it. He's gone, don't worry about him. He's gone to the peaceful place." He put his hand
Larry McMurtry
#84. You ought to take more chances," I said.
"I took too many earlier," she said. "I'm sorry.
Larry McMurtry
#85. Figure the reason you don't have much to say is you probably never met a man who liked to hear a woman talk.
Larry McMurtry
#86. He had his knife and gun belt on over his underwear, in case of sudden attack.
Larry McMurtry
#88. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.
Larry McMurtry
#89. It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate.
Larry McMurtry
#90. Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.
Larry McMurtry
#91. One of the things that Ang brings to all of his projects is his deep sense of being a double exile, an outsider's outsider.
Larry McMurtry
#92. I don't eat the white of eggs if I can help it," Jasper said. "I hear it causes blindness.
Larry McMurtry
#93. Give Call a grievance, however silly, and he would save it like money.
Larry McMurtry
#94. Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed.
Larry McMurtry
#95. He didn't tell Newt all he knew. He didn't tell him that even when life seemed easy, it kept on getting harder.
Larry McMurtry
#96. A man that sleeps all night wastes too much of life.
Larry McMurtry
#97. Alone. "A military unit is a fine thing when it works," he said. "But it usually don't work. A solitary feat of arms is better, if the foe is worthy.
Larry McMurtry
#98. I ain't kin to nobody in this world. I don't want to be. I won't be.
Larry McMurtry
#99. Members of the Academy are mostly urban people. We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It's not easy even to get a rural story made.
Larry McMurtry
#100. 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
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