She didn’t know what to do with the severed leg. She had cut it off, but she didn’t want to touch it or even look at it.
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...
Occasionally the very youngness of the young moved him to charity--they had no sense of the swiftness of life, nor of its limits. The years would pass like weeks, and loves would pass too, or else gro...
Nobody run off with her, Roscoe said. She just run off with herself, I guess.
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...
Augustus could just make out the snake, coiled in a corner, but decided not to shoot it; on a quiet spring evening in Lonesome Dove, a shot could cause complications. Everybody in town would hear it a...
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...
A man can only do a given thing so many times with freshness and spirit--then, no matter what it is, it becomes like an office task. I enjoy cards and whoring, but even cards and whoring can grow bore...
You told me to stay, July said. I know I did, son, Augustus said. I’m sure you wish you had. But yesterday’s gone on down the river and you can’t get it back. Go on with your digging and I’ll tidy up.
Without realizing it, he had been wasting time—years and years of time, time that would never be his again. He had failed to take advantage of the diversity of opportunity that had been, all along, av...
The truth was, most plans did fail, to one degree or another, for one reason or another. He had survived as a Ranger because he was quick to respond to what he had actually found, not because his plan...
Several times in his life he had felt an intense desire to start over, to somehow turn back the clock of his life to a point where he might, if he were careful, avoid the many mistakes he had made the...
No, but I have passed the point in life where I expect to be satisfied, Augustus said. At least I don’t expect to be satisfied with much. When it comes right down to it, Woodrow, I guess my own cookin...
Monkey John looked at the dead boy. By God, life is cheap up here on the goddamned Canadian River.Cheap, Blue Duck answered. And it might get cheaper.
But then July accepted it and never scolded back, so perhaps that was the way of the world: women scolded, and men kept quiet and stayed out of the way as much as possible.