Quotes by Larry McMurtry

About Larry McMurtry:

Larry Jeff McMurtry is an American novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter whose work is predominantly set in either the old West or in contemporary Texas. His novels include Horseman, Pass By (1962), The Last Picture Show (1966) and Terms of Endearment (1975), which were adapted into films earning 26 Academy Award nominations (10 wins). His 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove was adapted into a television miniseries that earned 18 Emmy Award nominations (seven wins), with the other three novels in his Lonesome Dove series adapted into three more miniseries earning eight more Emmy nominations. McMurtry and co-writer Diana Ossana adapted the screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), which earned eight Academy Award nominations with three wins, including McMurty and Ossana for Best Adapted Screenplay.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Show business imposes its own strict temporality: no matter how many CDs or DVDs we own, it would still have been better to have been there, to have seen the living performers in the richness of their being and to have participated, however briefly, ...

Larry McMurtry

Self-parody is the first portent of age.

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.

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 one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.

Larry McMurtry

If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.

Larry McMurtry

The crimes the law can understand are not the worst crimes.

Larry McMurtry

But, if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowle...

Larry McMurtry

For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and stinging lizards, but a hell for pigs and Tenness...

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 been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days...

Larry McMurtry

Who asked them dern pigs?” he said. “I guess they tracked us,” Augustus said. “They’re enterprising pigs.

Larry McMurtry

Jake, you’re a dern grasshopper,” Augustus said. “You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today you’re talking California.

Larry McMurtry

One day Augustus asked Newt to ride along with him, much to Newt’s surprise. In the morning they saw a grizzly, but the bear was far upwind and didn’t scent them. It was a beautiful day—no clouds in the sky. Augustus rode with his big rifle pro...

Larry McMurtry

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

Though loyal and able and brave, Pea had never displayed the slightest ability to learn from his experience, though his experience was considerable. Time and again he would walk up on the wrong side of a horse that was known to kick, and then look su...

Larry McMurtry

A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough. --Augustus "Gus" McCrae

Larry McMurtry

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

Larry McMurtry

How about a kiss?” “Are you man enough to try?” she asked.

Larry McMurtry

She sighed. Men were a pain.

Larry McMurtry

Could any woman live every day with that level of masculinity?

Larry McMurtry

Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.

Larry McMurtry

Author Bio

  • NameLarry McMurtry
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist, essayist, bookseller and screenwriter
  • BornJune 3, 1936
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionScreenwriter; Historian; Author; Novelist; Essayist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Writers Guild Of America Award