Top 250 Larry McMurtry Quotes (2024 Update)
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101. “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

102. “His memories were too sad, his hopes too thin. To have to say things on paper seemed a terrible task, for it stirred the memories.”

— Larry McMurtry

103. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

105. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

107. “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

108. “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

109. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

111. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

113. “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

114. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

116. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

118. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

121. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

124. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

128. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

130. “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

131. “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

132. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

134. “It doesn’t do to sacrifice for people unless they want you to.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

136. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

139. “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

140. “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

141. “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

142. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

144. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

146. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

149. “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

150. “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