• Greenlights

  • Raucous Stories and Outlaw Wisdom from the Academy Award-Winning Actor
  • By: Matthew McConaughey
  • Narrated by: Matthew McConaughey
  • Length: 6 hrs and 59 mins
  • 4.8 out of 5 stars (265 ratings)

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Greenlights  By  cover art

Greenlights

By: Matthew McConaughey
Narrated by: Matthew McConaughey
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Publisher's summary

From the Academy Award-winning actor, an unconventional memoir filled with raucous stories, outlaw wisdom and lessons learned the hard way about living with greater satisfaction.

I've been in this life for 50 years, been trying to work out its riddle for 42 and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last 35. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.

Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: if you know how, and when, to deal with life's challenges - how to get relative with the inevitable - you can enjoy a state of success I call 'catching greenlights'.

So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is 50 years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.

Hopefully, it's medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot's license, going to church without having to be born again and laughing through the tears.

It's a love letter. To life.

It's also a guide to catching more greenlights - and to realising that the yellows and reds eventually turn green, too.

Good luck.

The audiobook now includes an exclusive interview with Matthew McConaughey which was recorded during his book tour in 2021.

©2020 Matthew McConaughey (P)2020 Penguin Audio

What listeners say about Greenlights

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  • Overall
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    4 out of 5 stars

A fascinating life

I enjoyed this. Memoir but found it a bit preachey for my taste. It’s still worth a listen.

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Superb!!

The real sense of character comes through MM's amusing and mesmerising voice. Lots of golden nuggets to assist in life. Thoroughly enjoyed!!!

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Loved It

Funny, informative, brilliant. One of those books, you don't want to put down, or stop listening to.. Well done Matthew, even more strings to your bow :)

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

All class

Candid, funny, entertaining and insightful this book has it all. For young and old. Brill bro

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting story

I didn’t know much about the author before reading other than he was an actor and I had seen quite a few of his movies. His perspective is refreshing and enlightening. It wasn’t too in depth but still provides his interesting outlook on life within the stories he tells.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Sheer enjoyment!

Outstanding. If only every audiobook was narrated this enthusiastically and competently, with pure excitement and humour.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Great story telling

If any book deserves to be listened to and not read, it's this one. Matthew McConaughey is a phenomenal story teller.

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Alright, alright, alright...

Excellence. The stories & the performance are unbelievable (inside joke). One of the top 3 books I would recommend to everyone. You will laugh, you will be inspired, you will contemplate.

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An awe inspiring adventure!

What an amazingly beautiful story with the perfect amount of rawness and humour.

McConaughey has always captivated me in movies and interviews, so to hear his stories and life lessons thus far in his own words has given me a deeper respect for him and his work.

This is a book that I will read more than once.

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McConaughey is remarkable!

What an entertaining autobiography! Loved it from the minute I heard Matthew’s signature soothing drawl and enthusiasm, until the very last word.

Well written / narrated with such transparency and naked truths about his upbringing and what has made him the person he is right now.

His life story isn’t remarkable, but his character and life lessons are. Well done Matthew and thank you for sharing your Greenlights, notes to self and prescriptions. What a ride!

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