A novelist who ranks with Proust , Kafka , Musil and his friend James Joyce as one of the enduring pillars of Modernism.

You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.

Whenever I look at a mountain I always expect it to turn into a volcano.

There are three things I always forget. Names, faces and... the third I can't remember.

Health doesn't analyze itself, nor does it look at itself in the mirror. Only we sick people know something about ourselves.

Everyone tends to remember the past with greater fervor as the present gains greater importance.

To kill someone, even treacherously is more manly than to wound a friend by betraying his confidence.

It is comfortable to live in the belief that you are great, though your greatness is latent.

Misunderstanding women is a clear sign of scant virility.

Tears throw a veil over our faults and allow us to accuse fate without fear or contradiction.

Everyone remembers his past with greater vividness as the present becomes more important. Dying men in their last delirium are supposed to see their whole life spread out before them.

Evil doesn't just go away.

In America we need members of the Latino community to come to the Tea Party movement and enrich the Tea Party.

All works, no matter what or by whom painted, are nothing but bagatelles and childish trifles... unless they are made and painted from life, and there can be nothing... better than to follow nature.

Part of the thrill of guiding children into adulthood is the release. But it's also a parent's greatest act of surrender. Still, you have to let them go. Start now.

I lost 28 pounds in my divorce... because that's what a soul weighs.

For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

The world needs someone to look up to-like you. A national leader remarked, "There comes a time when we must take a stand-when we draw a line in the dust and say, 'Beyond this line, we do not go.'"

The chief qualification of a mass leader has become unending infallibility; he can never admit an error.

James McMurtry is a true Americana poet - actually he is a poet regardless of genre

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.