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Creativity Quote by Mac Davis

"I was out on the golf course, a guy came riding out in a golf cart and said, "Did you know that Elvis died?" And I just said, "Well, there you go". It was like I had kinda been expecting it"

About this Quote

The line lands because it refuses the expected script of celebrity grief. Mac Davis is on a golf course, the most ordinary, sunlit setting imaginable, when pop culture’s biggest thunderclap arrives like a clubhouse announcement. That contrast is the point: Elvis’s death isn’t delivered as tragedy but as casual weather, and Davis’s response - “Well, there you go” - is a deliberately flat, almost Texan shrug. It’s not callousness so much as a musician’s deadpan acknowledgement that the myth had been burning too hot to last.

The subtext is industry intimacy. Davis isn’t a distant fan; he’s someone who lived close enough to the machinery of fame to recognize its endgame. “Kinda been expecting it” reads like insider fatalism: the body can’t keep up with the brand, and everyone around the brand can feel the strain before the headline arrives. The way he recounts it also captures how news moved in that era - not via push notifications, but person-to-person, gossip-to-confirmation, with a golf cart as the courier of national mourning.

There’s a quiet protective move here, too. By underreacting, Davis keeps sentiment at arm’s length, as if too much reverence would be dishonest. Elvis becomes less a sacred icon than a colleague swallowed by the job. The quote works because it shows how legend looks from the side of the stage: not brighter, just more inevitable.

Quote Details

TopicMortality
SourceHelp us find the source
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Davis, Mac. (2026, February 16). I was out on the golf course, a guy came riding out in a golf cart and said, "Did you know that Elvis died?" And I just said, "Well, there you go". It was like I had kinda been expecting it. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-out-on-the-golf-course-a-guy-came-riding-164190/

Chicago Style
Davis, Mac. "I was out on the golf course, a guy came riding out in a golf cart and said, "Did you know that Elvis died?" And I just said, "Well, there you go". It was like I had kinda been expecting it." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-out-on-the-golf-course-a-guy-came-riding-164190/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I was out on the golf course, a guy came riding out in a golf cart and said, "Did you know that Elvis died?" And I just said, "Well, there you go". It was like I had kinda been expecting it." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-was-out-on-the-golf-course-a-guy-came-riding-164190/. Accessed 18 Feb. 2026.

More Quotes by Mac Add to List
Mac Davis Reacts to Elvis Death on a Golf Course
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About the Author

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Mac Davis (January 21, 1942 - September 29, 2020) was a Musician from USA.

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