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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

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Larry McMurtry
Age: 84 †
Born: 1936
Born: June 3
Died: 2021
Died: March 25
Author
Businessperson
Essayist
Historian
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Archer City
Texas
McMurtry
Larry
Larry Jeff McMurtry
People
Demands
Doings
Boundaries
Dense
Sadness
Crowded
Active
Vague
Sorrowing
Sorrow
Unhappiness
Nomads
Demand
Plain
Nomad
Happy
Thick
Landmarks
Lives
Horizon
Horizons

More quotes by Larry McMurtry

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Certainly on the vast windy plain, there was plenty of nothing to be looked at.
Larry McMurtry
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It's a fine world, though rich in hardships at times.
Larry McMurtry
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Americans don't want cowboys to be gay.
Larry McMurtry
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True maturity is only reached when a man realizes he has become a father figure to his girlfriends' boyfriend - and he accepts it
Larry McMurtry
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You expect far too much of a first sentence. Think of it as analagous to a good country breakfast: what we want is something simple, but nourishing to the imagination. Hold the philosophy, hold the adjectives, just give us a plain subject and verb and perhaps a wholesome, nonfattening adverb or two.
Larry McMurtry
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The Western notion of masculinity goes back a long way. It doesn’t allow for women, and it’s also racist - it doesn’t allow for other cultures.
Larry McMurtry
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A man who wouldn't cheat for a poke don't want one bad enough. --Augustus Gus McCrae
Larry McMurtry
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Writing is a form of herding. I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.
Larry McMurtry
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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 surprised when he got kicked.
Larry McMurtry
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Uva uvum vivendo varia fit
Larry McMurtry
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Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.
Larry McMurtry
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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 were over.
Larry McMurtry
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If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.
Larry McMurtry
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You can scare off a lot of cowboys just by looking mean, I guess.
Larry McMurtry
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Maybe you can make art out of unredeemed pain, but only if you're a genius -- Dostoyevsky perhaps.
Larry McMurtry
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Americans' lack of passion for history is well known. History may not quite be bunk, as Henry Ford suggested, but there's no denying that, as a people, we sustain a passionate concentration on the present and the future.
Larry McMurtry
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A man that will go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.
Larry McMurtry
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Texas is rich in unredeemed dreams
Larry McMurtry
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Books can accommodate the proximity of computers but it doesn't seem to work the other way around. Computers now literally drive out books from the place that should, by definition, be books' own home: the library.
Larry McMurtry
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The tradition I was born into was essentially nomadic, a herdsmen tradition, following animals across the earth. The bookshops are a form of ranching instead of herding cattle, I herd books. Writing is a form of herding, too I herd words into little paragraph-like clusters.
Larry McMurtry