381 Quotes by Larry McMurtry

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.

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

Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you’re a genius – Dostoyevsky perhaps.

I would prefer to be shot, myself, if I get that sick,” Call said. “Once there’s no avoiding death I see no point in lingering.” Augustus smiled at the comment, and poured himself a little more whiskey. “We’re all just lingering, Woodrow,” he said. “None of us can avoid dying – though old Scull did the best job of it of any man I know, while that old bandit had him.

A chain of follies had put him there: Call’s abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked.

The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.

Without realizing it, he had been wasting time – years and years of time, time that would never be his again. He had failed to take advantage of the diversity of opportunity that had been, all along, available to him.

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.

They respected only the strong men who could not be insulted without a price being paid in blood.