Larry Jeff McMurtry (1936 – 2021) was an American novelist, essayist, bookseller, and screenwriter whose work was predominantly set in either the Old West or contemporary Texas. Hope, our collection of Larry McMurtry Quotes will inspire you to live your life to the fullest.
If you wait, all that happens is that you get older.
– Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry Quotes
1. “The hardest thing on earth is choosing what matters.” – Larry McMurtry
2. “Wantin’ takes too much time…I’d rather be working.” – Larry McMurtry
3. “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
4. “Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.” – Larry McMurtry
5. “Yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back.” – Larry McMurtry
6. “The older the violin, the sweeter the music.” – Larry McMurtry
7. “People would be bored shitless if they had to love only the good in someone they care about.” – Larry McMurtry
8. “Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you’re a genius.” – Larry McMurtry
9. “Even experienced men were apt to flounder badly in crises if they lacked leadership.” – Larry McMurtry
10. “I think its a sickness to grieve too much for those who never cared a fig for you.” – Larry McMurtry
11. “Incompetents invariably made trouble for people other than themselves.” – Larry McMurtry
12. “Nothing good ever comes without a price.” – Larry McMurtry
13. “No illusion is more crucial than the illusion that great success and huge money buy you immunity from the common ills of mankind, such as cars that won’t start.” – Larry McMurtry
14. “I never met a soul in this world as normal as me.” – Larry McMurtry
15. “Self-parody is the first portent of age.” – Larry McMurtry
16. “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
17. “Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look – historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.” – Larry McMurtry
18. “The whole point of loyalty was not to change: stick with those who stuck with you.” – Larry McMurtry
19. “Once started, love couldn’t easily be stopped.” – Larry McMurtry
20. “The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.” – Larry McMurtry
21. “Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.” – Larry McMurtry
22. “A bookman’s love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.” – Larry McMurtry
23. “If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.” – Larry McMurtry
24. “I think we spent our best years fighting on the wrong side.” – Larry McMurtry
25. “A sleeping man would miss the best of the evening, and the moonrise as well.” – Larry McMurtry
26. “Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed.” – Larry McMurtry
27. “In times of crisis human beings don’t have it in them to be rational.” – Larry McMurtry
28. “It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living. I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.” – Larry McMurtry
29. “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
30. “The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings — crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow’s horizons are vague and its demands are few.” – Larry McMurtry
