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.
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...
Dish said no more, and Augustus decided not to tease him. 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 wo...
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.
All his work, and it hadn’t saved anyone, or slowed the moment of their going by a minute.
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.
Wrong theory, Augustus said. Talk’s the way to kill it. Anything gets boring if you talk about it enough, even death.
Sometimes Sonny felt like he was the only human creature in the town. It was a bad feeling, and it usually came on him in the mornings early, when the streets were completely empty, the way they were...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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...