Top 250 Larry McMurtry Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “The best to do with a death was to move on from it.”

— Larry McMurtry

102. “Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity – they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits.”

— Larry McMurtry

103. “It doesn’t do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to,” Clara said. “It’s just a waste.”

— Larry McMurtry

104. “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

105. “There’s no one book that would define me; I’d have to name nearly every book that I’ve read over the past 70 years. Reading has sustained me and has been the one constant throughout my life.”

— Larry McMurtry

106. “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

107. “I suppose she’s just dying of living – that’s the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later.”

— Larry McMurtry

108. “You better introduce yourself before you start talking Latin.”

— Larry McMurtry

109. “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

110. “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

111. “Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the first time around.”

— Larry McMurtry

112. “Don’t be reviling yourself. None of us is such fine judges of what to do.”

— Larry McMurtry

113. “Wantin’ takes too much time... I’d rather be working.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

115. “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

116. “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

117. “He ought to let the past keep its glow and not try to mix it with what he had in the present.”

— Larry McMurtry

118. “He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.”

— Larry McMurtry

119. “However, he didn’t have a high opinion of the average man’s ability as a fighter. The majority of men couldn’t fight at all and even most outlaws were the merest amateurs when it came to battle. Few could shoot well, and even fewer had any mind for strategy.”

— Larry McMurtry

120. “Maude Jones, had killed herself with a shotgun one morning, leaving a note which merely said, ‘Can’t stand listening to this wind no more.”

— Larry McMurtry

121. “I won’t tolerate vanity in a man, though I will in a woman.”

— Larry McMurtry

122. “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

123. “He thought living in a place where there were eagles to watch might encourage some pretty good dreams.”

— Larry McMurtry

124. “That’s one of the only things I look forward to about an evening like this, you know -someone to drink tea with at the end of it. For all I know, the whole point of civilization is to provide one with someone to drink tea with at the end of an evening. Otherwise you have no one with whom to talk over whatever may have happened during the evening. Dinner parties are often more fun to talk about than they are to attend – at least they aren’t complete until they’ve been discussed.”

— Larry McMurtry

125. “For a time Dish lost all sense of what life was about. He even lost the sense that he was a cowboy, the strongest sense he had to work with. He was just a fellow with a glass in his hand, whose life had suddenly turned to mud. The day before he had been a top hand, but what did that mean anymore?”

— Larry McMurtry

126. “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

127. “You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I’ll reduce your temptations. – Augustus “Gus” McCrae.”

— Larry McMurtry

128. “When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.”

— Larry McMurtry

129. “I hate rude behavior in a man,′ he explained in his quiet, unassuming drawl. ‘I won’t tolerate it.’ He politely tipped his hat, and rode away.”

— Larry McMurtry

130. “If you’re planning on dying today I hope you dig your grave first.”

— Larry McMurtry

131. “That possibility alone made his quandary more difficult. His wife had left for parts unknown, his deputy was wandering in other parts unknown, and the man he was supposed to catch was in yet other parts unknown. In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.”

— Larry McMurtry

132. “Pussyfooting is a vice I have been concerned to avoid.”

— Larry McMurtry

133. “He sat where he was, on Mouse, in the grip of terrible indecision. He almost wished something would happen – a sudden attack of Mexicans or something. He might be killed, but at least he wouldn’t have to make a choice between disobeying Mr. Gus and disobeying Lorena.”

— Larry McMurtry

134. “Woodrow don’t mention nothing he can keep from mentioning. You couldn’t call him a mentioner.”

— Larry McMurtry

135. “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

136. “He said there were going to be literary parties. I tried to imagine a literary party and was unable to. It was a very abstract effort, like trying to imagine a triangle or a cube. Wearing a suit made me feel even more abstract. I had a mental picture of me inside my suit, inside a party, inside a building, inside San Francisco. I didn’t know what I was doing, inside so many things that were unlike me.”

— Larry McMurtry

137. “It’s a funny life,” Augustus said. “All these cattle and nine-tenths of the horses is stolen, and yet we was once respected lawmen. If we get to Montana we’ll have to go into politics. You’ll wind up governor if the dern place ever gets to be a state. And you’ll spend all your time passing laws against cattle thieves.”

— Larry McMurtry

138. “Talk’s the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death.”

— Larry McMurtry

139. “He had known several men who had lost limbs in battle; the men all claimed that they still felt things in the place where the limb had been. It was natural enough, then, that with Bill suddenly gone he and Gus would continue to have some of the feelings that went with friendship, even though the friend was gone.”

— Larry McMurtry

140. “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

141. “It was only the thought that Deets was still knowing him, somehow, that kept him from feeling totally alone.”

— Larry McMurtry

142. “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

143. “When we finish up with this planet the insects will take over. You may not think it, seeing all this fair land, but the days of the human race are numbered. The insects are waiting their turn.”

— Larry McMurtry

144. “Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his thinking. It was probably better not to try and think back down the line of life.”

— Larry McMurtry

145. “He turned the cylinder of the Colt and listened to the small, clear clicks it made. The grip was wood, the barrel cool and blue; the holster had kept a faint smell of saddle soap. He slipped the gun back in its holster, put the gun belt around his waist and felt the gun’s solid weight against his hip. When he walked out into the lots to catch his horse, he felt grown and complete for the first time in his life.”

— Larry McMurtry

146. “Without risk there was no power, not for a grown man.”

— Larry McMurtry

147. “Trees had been so common that it was a shock to ride out on the plains and discover that there was a part of earth where there weren’t any.”

— Larry McMurtry

148. “When he walked out into the lots to catch his horse, he felt grown and complete for the first time in his life.”

— Larry McMurtry

149. “He wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves. He didn’t know.”

— Larry McMurtry

150. “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