I haven’t planned, very much, July said honestly. Seems like every time I make a plan something happens to change it.
He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry th...
He gathers information that we can’t see, and puts it together.
From him to the stars, in all directions, there was only silence and emptiness.
Everyone who came to see him asked questions that were either stupid or impertinent. Better to see no one than to see fools.
But, if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the n...
But once in a while, even if nobody mentioned one, the thought of women entered his head all on its own, and once it came it usually tneded to stay for several hours, filling his noggin like a cloud o...
A good title can save a book,
A chain of follies had put him there: Call’s abrupt decision to become a cattleman and his own decision, equally abrupt, to try and rescue a girl foolish enough to be taken in by Jake Spoon. None of i...
You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations. --Augustus Gus McCrae
You have to remember that I've been lonely for a long time. Loneliness is like ice. After you've been lonely long enough you don't realize you're cold, but you are... I don't know, maybe at the center...
You can’t avoid it, you’ve got to learn to handle it, Augustus said. If you only come face-to-face with your own mistakes once or twice in your life it’s bound to be extra painful. I face mine every d...
Why in the hell would anybody think they wanted to take cattle to Montana? Dixon, the scout, said. He had an insolent look.We thought it would be a good place to sit back and watch 'em shit, Augustus...
Son, this is a sad thing, Augustus said. Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don’t you go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business. If I ever run into Blue Duck I’ll ki...
People got opinions, that's all they've got.
It was inconsiderate, she thought, how blandly people mentioned the future in the sick rooms. Phrases like next summer were always popping out; people made such assumptions about their own continuity.
I figured out something, Lorie, he said. I figured out why you and me get along so well. You know more than you say and I say more than I know. That means we’re a perfect match, as long as we don’t ha...
He knew what he could certainly do, and what he might do if he was lucky, and what he couldn’t do barring a miracle.
For most of the hours of the day—and most of the months of the year—the sun had the town trapped deep in dust, far out in the chaparral flats, a heaven for snakes and horned toads, roadrunners and sti...
But just let me tell you something, son, a woman's love is like the morning dew, it's just as apt to settle on a horse turd as it is on a rose. So you better just get over it.