Larry McMurtry Quotes

55 Sourced Quotes

Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius — Dostoyevsky perhaps.

Larry McMurtry
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
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
-she remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men.

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

Larry McMurtry
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
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
WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over.

Larry McMurtry
Nobody run off with her, Roscoe said. "She just run off with herself, I guess.

Larry McMurtry
The Beltway protects our governing body from whatever chance infection of common sense might occasionally waft in from the country at large.

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
Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

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
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
If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

Larry McMurtry
I'm glad I've been wrong enough to keep in practice... You can't avoid it, you've got to learn to handle it. If you only come face to face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it's bound to be extra painful. I face mine every day—that way they ain't usually much worse than a dry shave.

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
"We choose our lovers for their flaws, you know," Mel said. "People would be bored shitless if they had to love only the good in someone they care about."

Larry McMurtry
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 feisty gentlemen.

Larry McMurtry
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
"Pat, did they get you for the embezzling?" Harmony asked.

Larry McMurtry
I think its a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.

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

Larry McMurtry