Larry McMurtry Quotes

I have become my own father.

My grandfather was raising me, and in many respects, I was trying to understand what it meant to be a man. He was my role model.

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

As an adult, I can't blame my parents any more.

What I've observed and what I've imagined - and definitely what I'm hoping - happens as you get older is that there's a mellowing, an acceptance that comes with time. I guess that I'll find out.

Paris Singer had vastly more to do with shaping my character than Mother had; although Mother made innumerable sacrifices for me, and Paris Singer made none. I wanted to be like him.

I'm not a role model to my kids. They're a role model to me.

True adulthood occurs the moment we grasp that the people who raised us do not exist solely for our comfort and reassurance. From that point on, the steady stream of unconditional love and support we've expected from them all our lives has to flow both ways.

I always wanted to be like my dad.

I think some people really change when they become a dad. Like, I've changed in different ways. I - but, like, my comedy hasn't changed. And I've also seen people do that where you become this - you become a dad, and then all of a sudden, you're trying to be a role model.

Not having a father is big. You need guidance. I know, personally, when my father died, I needed guidance; I needed somebody to show me how to be a man, how to grow up, basically how to do the right thing.

I feel like I went from being a boy to being a man, in some respects, through the help of Dustin Hoffman.

Every guy is different, but just prepare to know him in a different way and be OK with it, because the times I've lived with girls, and I've lived with some very sweet girls, I felt bad that they had to live with me.

It's not that we have too much mother, but too little father. We can't forgive our mothers for taking the place of our fathers until we are ready to see that the point of a man's life is to be a father and a mentor, and we can't do that because we don't know how we would be a father or a mentor when we never had one.

As far as children out there that hate their moms and dads, just get over it, because you get one dad and one mom. You know, suck it up. Learn something.

When I got to the WWE, I found out there were a lot of girls who looked up to me and that I was giving them confidence. I realized I'm not doing this just for me.

I think all of us make the mistake of thinking we're going to change people when we get together. But we're not. People are who they are. And people change in their own time.

When it comes to little girls, God the father has nothing on father, the god. It's an awesome responsibility.

We have a tendency to want the other person to be a finished product while we give ourselves the grace to evolve.

To live in love is life's greatest challenge. It requires more sublety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge and strength than any other human endeavor.

If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox.

When I was 25, I believed I could change the world. At 41, I have come to the realization that I cannot change my wife, my church, or my kids, to say nothing of the world. Try as I might, I have not been able to manufacture outcomes the way I thought I could, either in my own life or other people's.

The act of loving is an act of self-evolution even when the purpose of the act is someone else's growth.

When I was in my early twenties, I fell in love at least 20 times a day. You have to be with someone where you think: if the world was full of people like you, I could not be monogamous. As you get older, you get to know yourself a little more. The older you get, the more you realize what you need. And you also realize how your choice in relationships is influenced by how you grew up. Now I feel like I've explored the dynamic of how I grew up, and I'm free to find someone who's really going to be a wonderful companion.

Having a strong father, I wanted an older man.