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.
Are you expecting a war party? Call asked the judge. You seem to be thoroughly armed. I expect perdition, always have, the judge replied. I keep this building at my back, and several guns handy, in ca...
You probably drink too much. If you hand me that bottle, I'll reduce your temptations. --Augustus Gus McCrae
What’s that? Mr. Bynum said. He leaned over me, fists doubled up. Vagina, fallopian tube, penis, scrotum, I said. It took them both aback. I meant for it to. That ain’t what you said, Mr. Bynum said....
What would you know about anything, Jasper? Augustus asked. Age don’t slow a man’s whoring. It’s lack of income that does that. No more prosperous than you look, I wouldn’t think you’d know much about...
Such is the life and death of a good cowboy.
She had always loved to tease and considered it an irony of her life that she was often drawn to men who didn’t recognize teasing even when she was inflicting it on them.
See this page of paper? It’s blank, Scull said. That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir—this page and hundreds...
Perhaps, he thought, as he turned back, that was what Augustus wanted: just to be free for a few days, just to saddle his horse and ride.
If I’d have wanted civilization I’d have stayed in Tennessee and wrote poetry for a living,
He and Augustus had discussed the question of leadership many times. It ain’t complicated, Augustus maintained. Most men doubt their own abilities. You don’t. It’s no wonder they want to keep you arou...
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...
Do your best, if you happen to love a fool. You'll have my sympathy. Some folks will preach that it's a woman's duty never to quit, once you make a bond with a man. I say that's folly. A bond has to w...
Call had never thought much about age. Charlie Goodnight liked to talk about it, but Call found the talk tedious. He was as old as he was, like everyone else; as long as he could still go when he need...
By the time the shade had reached the river, Augustus would have mellowed with the evening and be ready for some intelligent conversation, which usually involved talking to himself.
Blue Duck could never avoid a moment of fear, when his father's eyes became the eyes of a snake. He choked off his insult -- he knew that if he spoke, he might, in an instant, find himself fighting Bu...
Best to help such boys have their moment of fun, before life’s torments snatched them.
Augustus said. You can’t have this leg, and if you’re thinking of overpowering me you have to calculate on losing about half the town. I can shoot straight when I’m drunk, too. I only want to save you...
All his work, and it hadn’t saved anyone, or slowed the moment of their going by a minute.
All America lies at the end of the wilderness road, and our past is not a dead past, but still lives in us. Our forefathers had civilization inside themselves, the wild outside. We live in the civiliz...