Larry McMurtry

“Afterwards the members of the little war party felt fine. Torturing whites was a splendid way to spend the afternoon.”

— Larry McMurtry

“Talk's the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death.”

— Larry McMurtry

“He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn’t do barring…

— Larry McMurtry

Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.

— Larry McMurtry

“The first difference Newt noticed about being grown up was that time didn't pass as slow.”

— Larry McMurtry

Members of the Academy are mostly urban people. We are an urban nation. We are not a rural nation. It's not easy…

— Larry McMurtry

“She didn’t know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn’t want to touch it…

— Larry McMurtry

True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriend - and he…

— Larry McMurtry

WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just…

— Larry McMurtry

“I figured out something, Lorie,” he said. “I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than…

— Larry McMurtry

“It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that…

— Larry McMurtry

The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a…

— Larry McMurtry

You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want…

— Larry McMurtry

“If you mean Miss Austen, I don't find her particularly romantic," Tasmin declared. "Can't say that I care much about the marriage…

— Larry McMurtry

Through my college years, topping that ridge had always given me a great sense of being home, but time had diminished the…

— Larry McMurtry

Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its…

— Larry McMurtry

I remember that the single most vicious letter I ever read was the letter Hemingway wrote Scribners when they asked him to…

— Larry McMurtry

For the past several centuries the bonding power of the family dinner table has been one of the few constants, and now…

— Larry McMurtry

“Love’s a terrible price to pay for company, ain’t it, Matty?” Caleb said. “I won’t pay it, myself. I’d rather do without…

— Larry McMurtry

One of the things that Ang brings to all of his projects is his deep sense of being a double exile, an…

— Larry McMurtry

I don't do well with changes in my routine. I read at least three newspapers a day, for example. I'm frustrated if…

— Larry McMurtry

The Western notion of masculinity goes back a long way. It doesn’t allow for women, and it’s also racist - it doesn’t…

— Larry McMurtry

I don't see how being married could be any worse than listening to you talk for twenty years, but that still ain't…

— Larry McMurtry

“Do you know what it means to be heartbroken?...It means your heart isn't whole, so you can't really do anything wholeheartedly.”

— Larry McMurtry

“He decided not to shoot the tall stranger, mainly because he admired his soft felt hat.”

— Larry McMurtry

“Monkey John looked at the dead boy. "By God, life is cheap up here on the goddamned Canadian River." "Cheap," Blue Duck…

— Larry McMurtry

“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

“I’m in the mood to travel. Once you boys get settled I may go to China, for all you know.”

— Larry McMurtry

“She wasn’t going to succeed in newspapers if she didn’t ask the big questions when she could.”

— Larry McMurtry

“It's like I told you last night son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. But pretty in the sunlight, he added”

— Larry McMurtry

“I wish you'd stop talking about your own death," Gus said, in a joking tone. "It ain't genteel.”

— Larry McMurtry

“woman’s love is like the morning dew, it’s just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a…

— Larry McMurtry

A woman's love is like the morning dew. It's just as likely to settle on a horse turd as a rose.

— Larry McMurtry

“It's very peculiar, the situations life presents one with, Father Geoff reflected.”

— Larry McMurtry

“Listening to women ain't the fashion in this part of the country."--Augustus McCrae”

— Larry McMurtry

“It was a weakness, but he could not bear to disappoint women, even if it was ultimately for their own good.”

— Larry McMurtry

“You ought to take more chances," I said. "I took too many earlier," she said. "I'm sorry.”

— Larry McMurtry

“Ever since he was a little boy, he had always tried to make things sound better than they actually were.”

— Larry McMurtry

“I don’t claim to know much: cards, fucking, and dentistry about covers it,” Doc said.”

— Larry McMurtry

There isn't a thought in my head I care to be alone with for more than five minutes.

— Larry McMurtry