A man that will go along with six killings is making his escape a little slow.
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...
She remembered them kindly, for there was a sweetness in boys that didn't last long, once they became men.
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.
You should be proud of her. She cracked the wall, and I never thought I'd live to see it cracked.What are you talking about? I said. What wall?The one you built around you, Jeannie said. Don't say it...
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...
When the lightning struck, the whole prairie would be bathed for a second in white light.
Trees had been so common that it was a shock to ride out on the plains and discover that there was a part of earth where there weren’t any.
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...
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.
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...
Part of the trick of being happy is a refusal to allow oneself to become too nostalgic for the heady triumphs of one's youth.
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.
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.
Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his...
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.
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...
Wrong theory, Augustus said. Talk’s the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death.