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Top 30 Thomas McGuane Quotes (2025 Update)

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Literature is the ditch I’m going to die in. It’s still the thing I care most about.”

1. “Literature is the ditch I’m going to die in. It’s still the thing I care most about.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “My life was the best omelette you could make with a chainsaw.”

2. “My life was the best omelette you could make with a chainsaw.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “The essence of sport is courage.”

3. “The essence of sport is courage.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “The occupational hazard of making a spectacle of yourself, over the long haul, is that at some point you buy a ticket too.”

4. “The occupational hazard of making a spectacle of yourself, over the long haul, is that at some point you buy a ticket too.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Early on I decided that fishing would be my way of looking at the world. First it taught me to look at rivers. Lately it has been teaching me how to look at people, myself included.”

5. “Early on I decided that fishing would be my way of looking at the world. First it taught me to look at rivers. Lately it has been teaching me how to look at people, myself included.”

— Thomas McGuane

$Thomas McGuane Quote: “An undisturbed river is as perfect as we will ever know, every refractive slide of cold water a glimpse of eternity.”$

6. “An undisturbed river is as perfect as we will ever know, every refractive slide of cold water a glimpse of eternity.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “It don’t do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.”

7. “It don’t do you no nevermind to tell nobody nothing.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I may be the wrong person for my life.”

8. “I may be the wrong person for my life.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “We have reached the time in the life of the planet, and humanity’s demand upon it, when every fisherman will have to be a river-keeper, a steward of marine shallows, a watchman on the high seas. We are beyond having to put back what we have taken out. We must put back more than we take out.”

9. “We have reached the time in the life of the planet, and humanity’s demand upon it, when every fisherman will have to be a river-keeper, a steward of marine shallows, a watchman on the high seas. We are beyond having to put back what we have taken out. We must put back more than we take out.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “You can’t say enough about fishing. Though the sport of kings, it’s just what the deadbeat ordered.”

10. “You can’t say enough about fishing. Though the sport of kings, it’s just what the deadbeat ordered.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I’d be happy to have my biography be the stories of my dogs. To me, to live without dogs would mean accepting a form of blindness.”

11. “I’d be happy to have my biography be the stories of my dogs. To me, to live without dogs would mean accepting a form of blindness.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I like young girls. Their stories are shorter.”

12. “I like young girls. Their stories are shorter.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Giving freaks a pass is the oldest tradition in Montana.”

13. “Giving freaks a pass is the oldest tradition in Montana.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Fishing should be a ceremony that reaffirms our place in the natural world and helps us resist further estrangement from our origins.”

14. “Fishing should be a ceremony that reaffirms our place in the natural world and helps us resist further estrangement from our origins.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Angling is extremely time consuming. That’s sort of the whole point.”

15. “Angling is extremely time consuming. That’s sort of the whole point.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “After fifty years of living, it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work, whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody’s teeth.”

16. “After fifty years of living, it occurs to me that the most significant thing that people do is go to work, whether it is to go to work on their novel or at the assembly plant or fixing somebody’s teeth.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time does not seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.”

17. “Young anglers love new rivers the way they love the rest of their lives. Time does not seem to be of the essence and somewhere in the system is what they are looking for.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I’m going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water.”

18. “In the future, I mean to be a fine streamside entomologist. I’m going to start on that when I am much too old to do any of the two thousand things I can think of that are more fun than screening insects in cold running water.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Something had gone amiss with men, and the weak ones were dangerous.”

19. “Something had gone amiss with men, and the weak ones were dangerous.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “We want a little light to live by. A start somewhere. Little steps for little feet. Or even something commanding, scriptural or mighty. I myself am discouraged to finding a hot lead on the Altogether. Like every child of the century deluded enough to keep his head out of the noose, I expect God’s Mercy in the end. Nevertheless, I frequently feel that anybody’s refusal to commit suicide is a little fey. Walking about as though nothing were wrong is just too studied for the alert.”

20. “We want a little light to live by. A start somewhere. Little steps for little feet. Or even something commanding, scriptural or mighty. I myself am discouraged to finding a hot lead on the Altogether. Like every child of the century deluded enough to keep his head out of the noose, I expect God’s Mercy in the end. Nevertheless, I frequently feel that anybody’s refusal to commit suicide is a little fey. Walking about as though nothing were wrong is just too studied for the alert.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “The mountains paralleled the valley and the snowy peaks were extending with fall to the valley floor.”

21. “The mountains paralleled the valley and the snowy peaks were extending with fall to the valley floor.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.”

22. “By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Generally, we are united in the belief that all rod design has been progressive and that the ideas about fly rods in the past were so bad as to make it amazing that people were able to fish at all.”

23. “Generally, we are united in the belief that all rod design has been progressive and that the ideas about fly rods in the past were so bad as to make it amazing that people were able to fish at all.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “The trouble is, you can’t properly present something you don’t believe in.”

24. “The trouble is, you can’t properly present something you don’t believe in.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I still don’t see why you think this is a matter of conviction when it’s just an extended bar fight.”

25. “I still don’t see why you think this is a matter of conviction when it’s just an extended bar fight.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I think he was just doing his best, getting along by going along with my mother, whose piety and evangelical fever had preoccupied her family since the last century. She knew no other world – God the Tyrant and supplicant humanity crawling on its belly to be forgiven for sins they never knew they’d committed. ‘It’s no sense defying the LORD,’ she told me. ‘He’s got all the coons up one tree.”

26. “I think he was just doing his best, getting along by going along with my mother, whose piety and evangelical fever had preoccupied her family since the last century. She knew no other world – God the Tyrant and supplicant humanity crawling on its belly to be forgiven for sins they never knew they’d committed. ‘It’s no sense defying the LORD,’ she told me. ‘He’s got all the coons up one tree.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Napoleon said that if it weren’t for religion the poor would kill the rich. This may be all you needed to know about any human community. The churches were the real police stations, the real keepers of law and order.”

27. “Napoleon said that if it weren’t for religion the poor would kill the rich. This may be all you needed to know about any human community. The churches were the real police stations, the real keepers of law and order.”

— Thomas McGuane

28. “We both liked children; we just didn’t want any ourselves. There were children everywhere, and we saw no reason to start our own brand. Young couples plunge into parenthood and about half the time they end up with some ghastly problem on their hands. We thought we’d leave that to others.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I had just settled Grandma on her folding chair and popped open our box lunch when the corpse floated by.”

29. “I had just settled Grandma on her folding chair and popped open our box lunch when the corpse floated by.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “I simply feel that the frontier of angling is no longer either ethical or geographical. The Bible tells us to watch and listen. Something like this suggests what fishing ought to be about: using the ceremony of our sport and passion to arouse greater reverberations within ourselves.”

30. “I simply feel that the frontier of angling is no longer either ethical or geographical. The Bible tells us to watch and listen. Something like this suggests what fishing ought to be about: using the ceremony of our sport and passion to arouse greater reverberations within ourselves.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “Quinn wanted to make her see that people didn’t live like this; but what was the use. No one was going to get her away from Bird Man out there.”

31. “Quinn wanted to make her see that people didn’t live like this; but what was the use. No one was going to get her away from Bird Man out there.”

— Thomas McGuane

Thomas McGuane Quote: “He paused long enough for me to consider how wonderful life could be when it had great literature-style items, such as coincidence and fate and elegant ironies.”

32. “He paused long enough for me to consider how wonderful life could be when it had great literature-style items, such as coincidence and fate and elegant ironies.”

— Thomas McGuane

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