“Texas tall talk is not a lie; it is an expression of a larger truth.” (Paul Crume)

Paul Crume (1912-1975) was a columnist for the Dallas Morning News, where he wrote the front-page “Big D” column of news tidbits. In his book A Texan at Bay (1961), he wrote: “Outsiders never understand that Texas tall talk is not a lie. It is the expression of the larger truth.”
   
Crume had written a 1948 article about Texas and Alaska where a speaker was quoted with a similar “larger truth” thought: “This is true because Alaskans are very good folk; they are very like Texas people. They have imagination. They do not allow a mere fact to stand in the way of the larger truth.”
   
   
OCLC WorldCat record
A Texan at Bay
by Paul Crume
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: New York, McGraw-Hill [1961]
 
Find a Grave Memorial
E. Paul Crume
Birth:  Feb. 24, 1912
Death:  Nov. 16, 1975
A leading columnist with The Dallas Morning News, where his column, “Big D” received front-page space. Mr. Crume was also the author of A Texan at Bay and a compilation of his daily columns was also featured in The World of Paul Crume - edited by his wife. (bio by: Larry Chenault)
 
Texas: The Big Picture
Outsiders never understand that Texas tall talk is not a lie; it is an expression of a larger truth.—Anonymous.
   
13 April 1948, Dallas (TX) Morning News, “The Threat: Alaska; Texas’ Big Talk Faces Revision” by Paul Crume, section 1, pg. 8:
“Alaska is the only country which the United States ever gave back to the Indians,” said Robert W. Hancock, Dallas attorney.
(...)
“Texas should not worry about the size of Alaska,” he said. “The size of Alaska is largely imaginary. Everything about Alaska is largely imaginary, except the desire to get out if you have to stay there.
 
“This is true because Alaskans are very good folk; they are very like Texas people. They have imagination. They do not allow a mere fact to stand in the way of the larger truth.”
   
1 July 1995, Daily Register (Oelwein, Iowa), “‘Texas Siftings’ gives readers humor, history” by Mike Cochran, pg. C2, col. 4:
“Outsiders never understand that Texas tall talk is not a lie. It is the expression of the larger truth.”—Paul Crume, “A Texan at Bay,” 1961.
 
Google Books
1001 Greatest Things Ever Said about Texas
by Donna Ingham
Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot
2006
Pg. 137:
Outlanders never understand that the Texas tall talk is not a lie. It is the expression of the larger truth. At its most trivial, it is a tale made up by a Texan out of the goodness of his heart to entertain his friends from other states, or maybe just to improve the shining hour.
Paul Crume