Top 250 Larry McMurtry Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 4 of 6

151. “All his work, and it hadn’t saved anyone, or slowed the moment of their going by a minute.”

— Larry McMurtry

152. “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

153. “Of course she teased the girls, but it was not the same as having a grown man to work on – she had often felt like pinching Bob for being so stolid. July was no better – in fact, he and Bob were cut from the same mold, a strong but unimaginative mold.”

— Larry McMurtry

154. “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

155. “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

156. “Little by little, the look of the land changes by the men we admire.”

— Larry McMurtry

157. “Give Call a grievance, however silly, and he would save it like money.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

162. “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.”

— Larry McMurtry

163. “In the vastness of the desert, each reduction of the group made them realize how small they were, how puny, in relation to the space they were traveling through.”

— Larry McMurtry

164. “He didn’t understand why women had such a need to question. He himself preferred just to let life happen, and act when opportunity arose.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

166. “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

167. “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

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

— Larry McMurtry

169. “It only went to show what he already knew, which was that there were more dangers in life than even the sharpest training could anticipate.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

171. “The other men were easy to talk to, but they didn’t know anything. If one stopped to think about it, it was depressing how little most men learned in their lifetimes.”

— Larry McMurtry

172. “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

173. “The man turned his blue eyes on July for a moment. ‘Why, son, I’m fine,’ he said. ‘You’re the one in trouble. I can see you carry a weight on your heart. You’re hurrying along to do something you may not want to do. I see by your badge that you’re a lawman. But the crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes. I have often sinned worse than the murderer, and yet I try to live in virtue.”

— Larry McMurtry

174. “He remembered the cold nights in their Arkansas cabin when he was a boy – how his mother piled quilts on top of him and his brothers, how peaceful it seemed under the quilts. Then it seemed like sleep was one of the most wonderful things in life.”

— Larry McMurtry

175. “Besides, though she considered herself his sweetheart, she didn’t consider him her master.”

— Larry McMurtry

176. “I still think we ought to just hire the town and take it with us. Then we’d have a good barkeep and someone to play the pianer.”

— Larry McMurtry

177. “You don’t get the pint, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “I’ve walked the earth in my pride all these years. If that’s lost, then let the rest be lost with it. There’s certain things my vanity won’t abide.”

— Larry McMurtry

178. “We mostly quarreled. He wanted what I wouldn’t give. I wanted what he didn’t have.”

— Larry McMurtry

179. “You told me to stay,” July said. “I know I did, son,” Augustus said. “I’m sure you wish you had. But yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back. Go on with your digging and I’ll tidy up.”

— Larry McMurtry

180. “Basically Jake just dreamed his way through life and somehow got by with it.”

— Larry McMurtry

181. “I sometimes think the sexual organs were put there to keep the human race humble,” she said. “They’ve certainly kept me humble.”

— Larry McMurtry

182. “That things were mysterious did not make them less valuable.”

— Larry McMurtry

183. “I’ll pass on snow myself, when I have the option.”

— Larry McMurtry

184. “But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.”

— Larry McMurtry

185. “Everyone who came to see him asked questions that were either stupid or impertinent. Better to see no one than to see fools.”

— Larry McMurtry

186. “When Newt walked in the barn to get a rope, the Captain turned and handed him a holstered pistol and a gun belt. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it,” he added, a little solemnly.”

— Larry McMurtry

187. “Of all the women he knew, she had meant the most; and was the one person in his life he felt he had missed, in some ways.”

— Larry McMurtry

188. “If you want to be part of a human community you have to suffer fools – patiently, if not gladly – and you must practice civility as best you can.”

— Larry McMurtry

189. “The thing that Buffalo Hump was most grateful for, as he rode into the emptiness, was the knowledge that in the years of his youth and manhood he had drawn the lifeblood of so many enemies. He had been a great killer; it was his way and the way of his people; no one in his tribe had killed so often and so well. The killings were good to remember, as he rode his old horse deeper into the llano, away from all the places where people came.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

191. “The sensible way, which he had pursued once or twice in his life, had always proved boring, usually within a few days.”

— Larry McMurtry

192. “People got opinions, that’s all they’ve got.”

— Larry McMurtry

193. “Somewhere along the Rio Concho, he had stopped feeling that he lived in a world where ledgers mattered.”

— Larry McMurtry

194. “Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who’d rather have the book than the click. A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.”

— Larry McMurtry

195. “The woman had won. In the end, it seemed they always did.”

— Larry McMurtry

196. “It was as if his whole life had suddenly lodged in his throat, a raw bite he could neither spit out nor swallow.”

— Larry McMurtry

197. “The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.”

— Larry McMurtry

198. “In fact, July felt he had reached a point in his life where virtually nothing was known.”

— Larry McMurtry

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

— Larry McMurtry

200. “Son, this is a sad thing,” Augustus said. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll kill.”

— Larry McMurtry