Thomas McGuane

Notable Quotes



I wrote a lot of 'Driving on the Rim' by giving myself the gift of being just as eccentric as I felt like.

From Thomas McGuane

All the ranchers I know have had back surgery, operations on their rotator cuffs. They all have new knees. I'd like to think I belong to that breed, but I don't.

From Thomas McGuane

It took me a long time to know enough about writing to really write short stories. You can't just immerse yourself, as you do in a novel, and see where everything goes. Novels are a very flexible, accommodating form. Short stories aren't.

From Thomas McGuane

Probably, subliminally, I think of the reader as a kind of collaborator. I don't want to say something for the reader that the reader could have said for himself.

From Thomas McGuane

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.

From Thomas McGuane

You never see a teaser for a film on television that doesn't have someone running around a corner with a gun. Have you noticed that?... I think Hollywood has as much responsibility for gun violence as the National Rifle Association.

From Thomas McGuane

I had a kind of tough early life. I had a tough time in school. I had an unsympathetic family in terms of what I was trying to do. I decided that my family situation was simply hopeless. I kinda bailed out, and my brother and sister didn't. I failed at marriage, which I'm very upset with myself over.

From Thomas McGuane

I strongly believe that literature can do something that nothing else can do, and that is embody the human spirit.

From Thomas McGuane

I've outlived my parents, and I've had some wonderful second chances in life. I feel remarkably uncheated.

From Thomas McGuane

Maybe I haven't been tested, but I have no fear of death at all. I was with Allen Ginsberg during the last year of his life, and he called all his friends and said, 'I'm on my way out, and it's kind of exciting.' I see it as kind of exciting, too.

From Thomas McGuane

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