quotations about Texas
The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him.
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch-22
I'm so shook. Texas literally has a pledge they say every morning. I thought it was a joke. Texas is a cult.
LINDSAY MCELWEE
Twitter post, February 15, 2017
The new Texas is probably going to be a sort of kid brother to California, with a kid brother's tendency to imitation.
LARRY MCMURTRY
In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas
At the risk of descending to unscientific generalizations, 90 percent of Texans give the other 10 percent a bad name.
DOC HOLLIDAY
attributed, Doc
The Americans are rich in nicknames. Every state has, or has had, its sobriquet. The people of ... Texas are nicknamed beef-heads.
E. COBHAM BREWER
The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable
The Typical Texan is a large-sized Jabberwock, a hairy kind of gorilla, who is supposed to ride on a horse. He is a half-alligator, half-human, who eats raw buffalo, and sleeps out on the prairie.
ALEXANDER SWEET
"Alexander Sweet looks at the distorted perceptions common among people outside the Lone Star State", Texas Siftings, 1882
Texas is like the elephant the blind man examined. To the traveler who has seen its western extremes, Texas is mountainous desert. The passerby on the High Plains believes that Texas is very much like Kansas, a newly settled land of wheat fields. Pine trees, paper mills, and Confederate flags make East Texas look much like Mississippi, and on its southern boundaries, Texas seems to be a well-paved extension of northern Mexico. The naturalist regards Texas as a diverse assemblage of desert, wetland, and plains ecosystems, separated by geological shifts and escarpments. To rock climbers, Texas is a place of desert handholds; for teenagers, it's a cluster of amusement and theme parks. For new-music lovers, Austin is the Emerald City, and to television viewers worldwide, Dallas is the home of oil barons and wives with big hair. To space enthusiasts Houston is command central for the Space Shuttle.... Hollywood depicts Texas as Cowboyland, New York writes that Texas is a redoubt of bigots and gun nuts, and Washington gives Texas the greeter's job when Congress is making overtures to Mexico. Because most Texans know only a part of our state, we shrug our shoulders and wonder what Texas really is. With so many vast regions and sometimes contradictory images, it can't be any other way. Consensus is never reached, even among those natives who are widely traveled and widely read. So we all simplify, generalize, and jump to our own conclusions, making Texas mean something a little bit different to each of us.
MARY G. RAMOS & DICK J. REAVIS
Texas
Texas, of course, comes by its sense of being a place apart honestly: From 1836-1845, it was its own country, the Republic of Texas, and it has long feasted on hyperbole. But these days Texas does feel increasingly like a caricature of a caricature.
MANNY FERNANDEZ
"What Makes Texas Texas", New York Times, May 7, 2017
You don't just move to Texas. It moves into you.
MANNY FERNANDEZ
"What Makes Texas Texas", New York Times, May 7, 2017
Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class.
JAMES MICHENER
Texas
Saskatchewan is much like Texas; except it's more friendly to the United States.
ADLAI STEVENSON
attributed, "Reporters' Notebook", The Buffalo News, September 24, 1992
I'll be somewhere down in Texas if you're lookin' for me,
Drinkin' in that great wide-open... soakin' up the summer breeze.
Kickin' back an' settled in with my family.
I'll be somewhere down in Texas if you're lookin' for me.
GEORGE STRAIT
"Somewhere Down in Texas"
Most Americans can cover their home state in less than a week. In Texas, if you concentrate and work at it steadily, you can traverse your territory by about age thirty-seven.
ROSEMARY KENT
attributed, 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about Texas
Texas is big now, but imagine the size of her as a republic. Back then the Panhandle had a panhandle.
MIKE BLAKELY
More Wild Camp Tales
If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.
PHILIP SHERIDAN
Civil War Memoirs
Behind the truth that Texas is a well-fortified conservative castle there are complexities, subtleties and shifts.
TOM DART
"Houston, we've got a problem: Trump could cost Republicans Texas, polls find", The Guardian, October 22, 2016
What if Texas is just one big conservative Alamo waiting for Santa Anna, or Santa Monica, to signal the onslaught?
FRANCIS WILKINSON
"Conservatives Love Californians Who Leave for Texas", Bloomberg, June 6, 2017
People from all over the United States can pick Texas out on the map. Even if they're not American, people know about Texas. All over the world, traveling Texans tend to identify as Texan rather than American, because, well, we get treated like celebrities when we do.
ELIZABETH ABRAHAMSEN
"8 Ways Being Texan is Like Being Famous", Wide Open Country, April 15, 2016
Texas will again lift its head and stand among the nations. it ought to do so, for no country upon the globe can compare with it in natural advantages.
SAM HOUSTON
attributed, Sam Houston Memorial Museum
This is Texas. We're still figuring out how to spell tolerance.
RACHEL CAINE
Bitter Blood