Top 250 Larry McMurtry Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “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

102. “He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn’t do barring a miracle.”

— Larry McMurtry

103. “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

104. “The best to do with a death was to move on from it.”

— Larry McMurtry

105. “You’re the only man I know whose brain don’t work unless it’s in the shade.”

— Larry McMurtry

106. “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

107. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

110. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

112. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

117. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

119. “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

120. “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

121. “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

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. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

126. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

128. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

131. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

133. “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

134. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

136. “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

137. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

140. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

143. “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

144. “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

145. “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

146. “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

147. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

149. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry