Top 250 Larry McMurtry Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “In the night Lorena tried to sort it out in her mind. She had been hungry so much, tired so much, scared so much, that her mind didn’t work well anymore. Sometimes she would try to remember something and couldn’t – it was as if her mind and memory had gone and hidden somewhere until things were better.”

— Larry McMurtry

102. “You should marry me”, he said. “I will be good to you. I am not like these men. I have manners. You would see how kind I would be. I would never leave you. You could have an easy life.”

— Larry McMurtry

103. “Once started, love couldn’t easily be stopped.”

— Larry McMurtry

104. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

106. “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

107. “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

108. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

110. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

113. “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

114. “I sing about life. I am happy, but life is sad.”

— Larry McMurtry

115. “I would prefer to be shot, myself, if I get that sick,” Call said. “Once there’s no avoiding death I see no point in lingering.” Augustus smiled at the comment, and poured himself a little more whiskey. “We’re all just lingering, Woodrow,” he said. “None of us can avoid dying – though old Scull did the best job of it of any man I know, while that old bandit had him.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

118. “I could hear them whispering how Granddad had gone to a better place. They could think so and go to hell; I didn’t believe it. Not unless dirt is a better place than air.”

— Larry McMurtry

119. “My main skills are talking and cooking biscuits,” Augustus said. “And getting drunk on the porch. I’ve probably slipped a little on the biscuits in the last few days, and I’ve lost the porch, but I can still talk with the best of them.”

— Larry McMurtry

120. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

122. “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

123. “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

124. “Such is the life and death of a good cowboy.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

126. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

128. “It’s his dern laziness,” Call said. “Jake just kind of drifts. Any wind can blow him.”

— Larry McMurtry

129. “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

130. “He was tired of seeing his family only in dreams.”

— Larry McMurtry

131. “Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

134. “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

135. “He had seen highly competent men stand as if paralyzed in a crisis, though once someone took command and told them what to do they might perform splendidly.”

— Larry McMurtry

136. “A man that sleeps all night wastes too much of life.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

138. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

140. “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

141. “But the English are different, and they don’t know how to be other than different.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

143. “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

144. “We might all get killed this afternoon, for all I know. That’s the wild for you – it’s got its dangers, which is part of the beauty.”

— Larry McMurtry

145. “The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else grow sour.”

— Larry McMurtry

146. “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

147. “I needed a man,” Call replied. “I was hoping he might turn out to be a fighter.” “No, he’s just a jailer,” Billy said.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

149. “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

150. “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