Larry McMurtry Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won't start.

Larry McMurtry
Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look—historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

Larry McMurtry
A man that ain't willin' to cheat for a poke don't want it bad enough.

Larry McMurtry
True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriends – and he accepts it.

Larry McMurtry
I suppose you set up reading the Good Book all night-spoken by Woodrow Call

Larry McMurtry
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
Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country.

Larry McMurtry
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
The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.

Larry McMurtry
It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.

Larry McMurtry
The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings – crowded, active, thick... But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.

Larry McMurtry
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
But the English are different, and they don't know how to be other than different.

Larry McMurtry
I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.

Larry McMurtry
Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.

Larry McMurtry
A man that will go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.

Larry McMurtry
It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.

Larry McMurtry
There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

Larry McMurtry
From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.

Larry McMurtry
Call saw that everyone was looking at him, the hands and cowboys and townspeople alike. The anger had drained out of him, leaving him feeling tired. He didn't remember the fight, particularly, but people were looking at him as if they were stunned. He felt he should make some explanation, though it seemed to him a simple situation. "I hate a man that talks rude," he said. "I won't tolerate it.

Larry McMurtry
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
Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

Larry McMurtry
The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching; instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too; I herd words into little paragraphlike clusters.

Larry McMurtry
But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.

Larry McMurtry
A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough. —Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Larry McMurtry