Larry McMurtry Quotes

True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriend - and he accepts it

Self-parody is the first portent of age.

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

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

If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.

Uva uvum vivendo varia fit

People would be bored shitless if they had to love only the good in someone they care about.

A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.

Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.

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.

Yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back.

Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.

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

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

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

It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.

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

Anyway, whacking a surly bartender ain't much of a crime.

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

It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” ~spoken by Augustus McCrae

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.

Texas is rich in unredeemed dreams

The older the violin, the sweeter the music.

Nothing good ever comes without a price.

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

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.

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

A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.

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.

I once owned a collection of 77 novels that won the Pulitzer. The only good novel of the bunch was The Grapes of Wrath.

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.

The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight.

Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.

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

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

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

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

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.

If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.

In times of crisis human beings don't have it in them to be rational.

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.

Death and worse happened on the plains.

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.

... people are always turning out to be tougher than I think they are.

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

I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.

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.

Razzy was insulting me silently somehow.

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

They say money kinda melts when you take it across a border.