Texas Quotes

“If a man's from Texas, he'll tell you. If he's not, why embarrass him by asking?”
― John Gunther

“The only shortcut I have found to life is to sharpen my teeth on the bones of the wise.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“Art is in the act, not the product. Products simply provide a means to continue the process, a loan of sorts from the buyer. Now the Art is in the hands of the buyer who transforms a simple act as a gift of time to the artist. I for one can not say which is more beautiful.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“The apostrophe in Can't was added by someone who did not believe in the power of Can.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“Giving humans social media is like giving monkeys guns.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“Smile, you are here.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“I was born with two hands to be a giver, not a fighter.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“Give love as if you were being paid millions to do so. That is the key to lasting change.”
― Vic Stah Milien

“He wears a Stetson so clean you could eat a sandwich off the brim. All hat, no cattle. Keith leaned forward and looked me right in the eye,. Family's been in Texas since forever. Probably got a whole cedar chest full of white hoods in the attic.”
― Elizabeth Wetmore, Valentine

“This is a hard country, brush country, mean country, heartbreak country. Ugly in summer, drought-stricken, dusty, glaring, but in winter it is hideous.”
― John Houghton Allen, Southwest

“The second day I was in Texas. I was traveling through the part where the flat-footed, bilious, frog-sticker-toting Baptist biscuit-eaters live. Then I was traveling through the part where the crook-legged, high-heeled, gun-wearing, spick-killing, callous-rumped sons of the range live and crowd the drugstore on Saturday night and then all go round the corner to see episode three of "Vengeance on Vinegar Creek," starring Gene Autry as Borax Pete. But over both parts, the sky was tall hot brass by day and black velvet by night, and Coca Cola is all a man needs to live on.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men

“I scrubbed in the water while Ellie Mae chased a jackrabbit that was wandering on the shore. She nearly caught the rabbit, but the rabbit called for reinforcements. Soon nearly eighty rabbits emerged from the brush and began chasing my dog across the Texas plains. These were not rabbits like we have in Florida. Some of these were carrying tomahawks, and a few were on horseback.”
― Sean Dietrich , Will the Circle Be Unbroken?: A Memoir of Learning to Believe You’re Gonna Be Okay

“Halleck came from people who regarded a slight change of facial expression as adequate to convey the pain of a severed limb.”
― Miles Watson, Sinner's Cross

“There are no chic people in Texas.”
― Harper Lee

“The closest I'd ever gotten was a trip with Mom and Dad to Austin, Texas, through hill country: gently curving roads dissected by giant oaks, rolling rivers, and fields of bluebonnets so bountiful you'd think you'd stepped right into the heart of the ocean.”
― Misty Hayes, The Watchers

“Y'all have a song?'

H nods. 'Bất-tơ-phơ-lai de-lồ.'

'Butterfly yellow? You mean yellow butterfly.'

H starts to explain but pulls out her notebook. The most prepared notetaker on earth.

Bướm = butterfly, vàng = yellow.”
― Thanhha Lai, Butterfly Yellow

“They approach the low-water bridge where Frio Creek Flowed into the Purgatory River. Over the bridge, they passed the eighteen-hole golf course and club house, all built in the river bottom.
'All this had been made safe from flooding by the Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey,' Elliot Announced.
'How did they do that?' Maxwell looked around in amazement.
"They sent a lot of majors and colonels and government surveyors and simply announced in wouldn't flood here anymore. Cut right through all that environment red tape and reality”
― Peter Gent, North Dallas After 40

“I put a thirty-eight-special slug through the knob this morning... The killer was six foot-eight-inches tall, weighed about three hundred pounds, had long red hair, a full beard, was wearing a green and black plaid shirt... driving a brand new yellow and black school bus.”
― Cleo W. Robinson Jr., Trails to and Tales of Sanderson, Texas

“As late as November 9, 1963, Texas saw the enormous value of the poll tax and voted to maintain this tool of disfranchisement because "removing the poll tax requirement...would 'allow' minorities to 'flood the polls.”
― Carol Anderson, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy

“Mary: What are you teaching Him at that public high school of yours, Mrs. McElroy?

Joshua: She's teaching Me that this town is the armpit of Western civilization.”
― Terrence McNally, Corpus Christi

“Patricia: What they did was stupid and cruel and why I am going to write the president of the United States telling him that if there is any place in this country where nuclear bomb testing should be allowed, it's Corpus Christi, Texas.”
― Terrence McNally, Corpus Christi

“Barbecue, vegetable plate, baked beans, sweet tea, fried
cherry pie, and an apple


I'm almost catatonic as I hold the little slip of paper in my hand now. Harlan, Cody, and I didn't need Shawn to go into what "barbecue" meant. Classic Texas barbecue is a beef brisket, sausage, and ribs. A "vegetable plate" is traditionally a potato salad, raw white onions, and pickles. Not quite what most people would call a healthy vegetable plate, but this is how we do it in Texas.”
― Liza Palmer, Nowhere But Home

“Texas: state-sized porkchop of misery.”
― Justin Cronin, The Passage

“I moved to Texas, and I liked it there; but I did not stay, because my heart was not there.”
― Elise Aurelia Houston

“Her voice caught. She swallowed and tried to goon. "It was the wallet--that's how I knew it was Michael," she said. "I bought it for him our last Christmas together." She started to cry again, softly and with a sense of deflation, oxygen leaking out slowly as she sank into herself, salty tears falling.”
― Attica Locke, Pleasantville

“Her voice caught. She swallowed and tried to go on. "It was the wallet--that's how I knew it was Michael," she said. "I bought it for him our last Christmas together." She started to cry again, softly and with a sense of deflation, oxygen leaking out slowly as she sank into herself, salty tears falling.”
― Attica Locke, Pleasantville

“What had we all missed not growing up in Texas?”
― Lara Prior-Palmer, Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race

“Taking Texas, Adams feared, would lock in the worldview that Jackson represented. The country was already fighting what Adams considered a perpetual war on Native Americans, a crusade that Jacksonians used to create a racist solidarity among whites and to beat back demands for a more robust state capable of addressing social problems.”
― Greg Grandin, The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America

“She felt a pang, a deep wish for the bay, the soaring towers of the bridge, the sunlight skipping across ten thousand whitecaps between the Golden Gate and Alcatraz. She wanted the scent of the Pacific and the beauty of the cities and the mountains, and her man. She closed her eyes.
She opened them and felt small, surrounded by the sweep of the continent. The sky was vast. It was glorious and terrifying.”
― Meg Gardiner, Into the Black Nowhere

“I treasured these slightly mad little escapades. They were part of the carnival spirit of the city, which seemed on the verge of breaking into a fiesta. Even the five-and-ten-cent stores, the epitome of national conformity, took on a local flavor with their displays of turquoise and silver, Aztec pottery, and hand-tooled leather simply screaming for the open marketplace, while the fake pearls crouched back in awe. But it was the gay little Mexican girls who, smiling sweet-tempered behind the counters, set the mood. Never rude, never dull, never tired, they lent a graciousness to the city that seemed to be in secret league with the sunny atmosphere to conjure up its lighthearted spell.”
― Margaret Brown Kilik, The Duchess of Angus