Texans are people of the word - written, spoken, sung. That's not the stereotype, of course. Texans are doers, men and women of action. They're Davy Crockett swinging Ol' Betsy as the Alamo falls, Texas Rangers nabbing desperados in the South Texas brush country, cowboys riding rip-snortin' bulls on the West Texas prairie, hell-for-leather oilmen punching holes in the earth until they hit the big one.

I can tell you, though, that we're people of the word (if not the Word) after tracking down Texas quotations the past year for a collection Trinity University Press plans to publish in a few months. I discovered that the Lone Star State has always been a rich repository of piquant thoughts, curious notions and ideas memorably expressed. Whether it's Sam Houston excoriating his political rivals, the late journalist Molly Ivins satirizing the state Legislature or memoirist Mary Karr recounting the eccentricities of small-town life in mid-20th-century East Texas, we denizens of the Lone Star State have no compunction about expressing ourselves. What's more, non-Texans, whether they love or hate the place, have never been shy about telling us how they feel.

I haven't done a count, but I'm guessing that of the 600 quotations I've rounded up, Sam Houston is the most quotable of the Texan elders, while Ann Richards, Molly Ivins and maybe Larry McMurtry are the most quotable contemporary Texans. What follows are a sampling of my favorites. If you have Texas-related quotable quotes you've read, heard or made up, send them along. We'll run them on the website.

"In many ways Texans, like most peoples, came to define themselves by their enemies – a source of strength, but also of problems for the future."

- historian T.R. Fehrenbach

"As certain as truth and God exist, the admission of Texas into this Union will prove, sooner or later, an element of overwhelming ruin to the Republic."

- U.S. Rep. Daniel Barnard of New York, 1845

"I must say as to what I have seen of Texas it is the garden spot of the world. The best land, the best prospects for health I ever saw, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country here to settle."

- Davy Crockett

"That Baptists see nothing wrong with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders who are indisputably open-air coochie girls, is one of those anomalies we all live with here. Because football requires the suspension of rational thought, just as theater requires the suspension of disbelief, we see nothing odd in such phenomena as the Kilgore Rangerettes, the Apache Belles and other noted practitioners of the close order drill and baton-twirling arts."

- Molly Ivins

"I couldn't believe Texas was real. When I arrived there, there wasn't a blade of green grass or a leaf to be seen, but I was absolutely crazy about it. There wasn't a tree six inches in diameter at the time. For me Texas is the same big wonderful thing that the oceans and the highest mountains are."

- artist Georgia O'Keefe

"The first name of every geography teacher in Texas is 'Coach.' "

- business leader Bill Hammond

"Texas is a den of thieves – a rendezvous of rascals for all the continent."

- newspaper editor Horace Greeley

"If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell."

- Gen. Philip Henry Sheridan, 1866

"Needless to say, that did not represent my true opinion of this magnificent state."

- Sheridan, 1880

"Texas is an unself-conscious place. Nobody here is embarrassed about being who they are. Reactionaries aren't embarrassed. Rich folks aren't embarrassed. Rednecks aren't embarrassed. Liberals aren't embarrassed."

- Molly Ivins

"The story of Texas can be reduced to one sentence: somebody has something somebody else wants and will put up a fight to get it."

- journalist Mimi Swartz

"Good sportsmanship gets you beat 28 to 17."

- Bum Phillips, former Houston Oilers head coach

"To a Texan a car is like wings to a seagull. Our places are far apart and we must dip into them driving. For an often traveling man like myself, the junctions in the highways and the towns are like turns in a city well known."

- journalist Ronnie Dugger

"All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men."

- Sam Houston

"You can go to Hell; I will go to Texas."

- Davy Crockett

"I humble myself before God and there the list ends."

- Sam Houston

"Nowhere else would you put on pink shorts, a lynx coat, a seventeen-carat diamond and get into a white Rolls Royce to go to Safeway."

- writer Sandy Sheehy on Dallas' wealthy women

"There is no ceiling for crazy in Texas, nor political consequence."

- journalist Timothy Egan

"Politics is a lot like football – you have to be smart enough to play the game and dumb enough to think it's important."

- Ann Richards in a conversation with Bum Phillips

"Life in Lubbock taught me two things: One is that God loves you and he's gonna send you to Hell. The other is that sex is dirty and evil and nasty and filthy and sinful and bad and awful, and you should save it for the one you love."

- musician Butch Hancock

"Sex is still a word to freeze the average Texan's liver, particularly if the Texas is over 40 and his liver not already pickled."

- author Larry McMurtry

"As one old lady remarked, Texas was 'a heaven for men and dogs, but a hell for women and oxen.' "

- Texas pioneer Noah Smithwick

"Most of Houston will spend eternity in hell."

- evangelist Billy Graham

"It's been a hard day all around. First my wife's pet kangaroo has to go and get poisoned, and then somebody stole my midget butler's stepladder."

- A Texas oilman as he stepped off a Santa Fe train in Houston, 1957

"Much blood has been shed; but the battle is over: it was but a small affair."

- Mexican General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna after the fall of the Alamo