TEXAS QUOTES III

quotations about Texas

Texas quote

There are, in round numbers, about twelve million of us, and I'll cross my heart and hope to burn in hell if you'll see most of us on a horse or in a Cadillac, except maybe once a year at rodeo time or when some show-off invites us to the country club. It is true that we have horses in Texas--more than ever before--but the one in every forty Texans who owns a horse is way behind the one in every ten Texans who has a pickup truck. But watch your generalizations! This does not mean that every pickup has a rifle rack in the rear window and a citizen's band radio on the dash. Just as it does not mean that every Texan who drives a Cadillac is a millionaire. We do carry guns fairly freely, and we do talk by radio on the road of life, and indigestion knows we love bourbon and beer, barbecue and chicken-fried steak, but it would be inaccurate to hold up the redneck beside the cowboy and the millionaire as a symbol of the new Texas. We are too diverse a people; we simply dwarf, in numbers and subtlety, that exaggerated and grotesque trinity.

BILL PORTERFIELD

introduction, A Loose Herd of Texans


There used to be this ole' honky tonk
Right down there beside that ole' town square
That's where I had my first dance
As I ran my fingers through her auburn hair
It was torn down to build a dealership
Of some foreign car nobody'd ever seen
Their makin' off with everything that's left
So what's left of Texas for me?

CODY JOHNSON

"What's Left of Texas?"


Texas is like a case study for other states that are considering these really far-reaching restrictive problematic anti-choice bills.

EESHA PANDIT

"Lessons From the Fight for Reproductive Justice in Texas", Moyers & Company, April 7, 2017


Texas is a powerful word, and its power is magnified within the state. Attaching those two syllables to all manner of things -- and people and creatures -- lends them a certain authenticity and Texas-ness. That slice of bread isn't just toast. It's Texas Toast. That song on the radio isn't just country. It's Texas Country. That creature isn't just a toad. It's a Texas Toad, also known by its not-as-catchy scientific name, Anaxyrus speciosus.

MANNY FERNANDEZ

"When They Say 'State Your Name,' She Says: 'Yes, It Is'", New York Times, February 14, 2017


Texas, the gathering place of the most restless and imaginative spirits in the union, inclines naturally to the romantic and poetical. Nowhere can a 'demonstration'--be it a fight or a ball--be got up quicker or more effectively; and nowhere ... is violent public feeling more easily created or more rapidly changed.

JANE MCMANUS CAZNEAU

New York Weekly Tribune, June 1, 1844


I like the image Texas brings to mind--that of bigness, of strength, of goodness.

NINFA LAURENZO

attributed, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about Texas


Farms are so big in Texas that on one of them a man starts out in the Spring and plows a straight furrow right on through until Fall and then he harvests back.

BOYCE HOUSE

attributed, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about Texas


That's the thing about East Texas. Red dirt never quite washes out, and pine pollen is tenacious as original sin.

MARKHAM SHAW PYLE

The Transatlantic Disputations: Essays and Meditations


No one ever leaves Texas after they have been here a certain length of time. They either can't or don't want to, or it may be as the old settlers used to say, "having once drunk Red River water, it was not possible to go back"; the fact remains, few people seem to come here with a view of staying, but they do stay and have stayed until nearly three millions are here, and there are more to follow.

H. H. MCCONNELL

Five Years a Cavalryman, or Sketches of Regular Army Life on the Texas Frontier


Non-Texas Americans find much in Texas to praise, but, adopting the traditional Old World attitude toward the New, they usually find much more to criticize. The faults of Texas, as they are recorded by most visitors, are scarcely unfamiliar, for they are the same ones that Europeans have been taxing us with for some three hundred years: boastfulness, cultural underdevelopment, materialism, and all the rest. In enough ways to make it interesting, Texas is a mirror in which Americans see themselves reflected, not life-sized but, as in a distorting mirror, bigger than life. They are not pleased by the image. Being unable to deny the likeness, they attempt to diminish it by making fun of it. As a consequence, Texas has become the butt of jokes too numerous--not to mention tedious--to count. Still, the image remains. In the end, perhaps, it may not be possible to escape the fact that the epitome of America is Texas, and the epitome of Texas is its most picturesque product, its millionaires.

JOHN BAINBRIDGE

The Super-Americans


If you grab enough Texas land, somethin' good is bound to happen.

JAMES MICHENER

Texas


Texas has four seasons. Drought, Flood, Blizzard and Twister.

ANONYMOUS


Texas is like an attractive, troublesome, and immature person who gets an inheritance -- ranching -- and then gets a second one -- oil -- and now has to grow up and get to work.

JOE B. FRANTZ

Texas Monthly, June 1986


If I ever have another son I think I will name him Texas: Texas Strong. There would be a lot of fun in normal parenting. "Texas, why can't you behave?" I can hear the kid saying, "Have you read my history?"

W. F. STRONG

"When They Say 'State Your Name,' She Says: 'Yes, It Is'", New York Times, February 14, 2017


For a few precious moments ... I'm back in Old Texas, under a high sky, where all things are again possible and the wind blows free.

LARRY L. KING

The Atlantic Monthly, 1975


One objection I have heard voiced to works of this kind--dealing with Texas--is the amount of gore spilled across the pages. It can not be otherwise. In order to write a realistic and true history of any part of the Southwest, one must narrate such things, even at the risk of monotony.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

letter to August Derleth, March 1933

Tags: Robert E. Howard


Whether our governor is running for president because God told him to or Jimmy Kimmel is singing love songs to our capital city, Texas is pretty much constantly in the news for one thing or another.

ELIZABETH ABRAHAMSEN

"8 Ways Being Texan is Like Being Famous", Wide Open Country, April 15, 2016


There are parts of Texas where a fly lives ten thousand years and a man can't die soon enough.

KATHERINE DUNN

Geek Love


The idea of Texas remains a compelling part of the state's imaginative power. It is the spirit of the place--warts and all--that continues long after the deaths of Crockett, Bowie, Audie Murphy, and Lyndon Johnson.

MARK BUSBY

Writers' and Publishers' Guide to Texas Markets


Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

MOLLY IVINS

The Nation, June 18, 2001