Lonesome Dove Quotes

“The first difference Newt noticed about being grown up was that time didn't pass as slow.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Of course they had heard that the buffalo were being wiped out, but with the memory of the southern herd so vivid, they had hardly credited the news. Discussing it in Lonesome Dove they had decided that the reports must be exaggerated — thinned out, maybe, but not wiped out. Thus the sight of the road of bones stretching out over the prairie was a shock. Maybe roads of bones were all that was left. The thought gave the very emptiness of the plains a different feel. With those millions of animals gone, and the Indians mostly gone in their wake, the great plains were truly empty, unpeopled and ungrazed.

Soon the whites would come, of course, but what he was seeing was a moment between, not the plains as they had been, or as they would be, but a moment of true emptiness, with thousands of miles of grass resting unused, occupied only by remnants – of the buffalo, the Indians, the hunters.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“It struck her that endings were never as you would expect them to be.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“He began to wish that somehow things could have been rounded off a little better. Of course he knew death was no respecter. People just dropped when they dropped, whether they had rounded things off or not.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“None of it was sensible, yet he had to admit there was something about such follies that he liked. The sensible way, which he had pursued once or twice in his life, had always proved boring ... There was much more enterprise in certain follies, it seemed to him.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Seems like every time I make a plan something happens to change it."
"Well, life's a twisting stream," Augustus said.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“The vast plain was beautiful, but it had reduced Pea Eye to a scarred wreck.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Son, this is a sad thing,” Augustus said. “Loss of life always is. But the life is lost for good. Don't go attempting vengeance. You’ve got more urgent business… Don't be trying to give back pain for pain.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“Do you want me to do anything about them Indians?” Call asked.

“Which Indians?” Augustus asked, wondering what his friend could be talking about. Call’s cheeks looked drawn, as though he hadn’t eaten for days, though he was eating even as he asked the question.

“Those that shot the arrows into you,” Call said.

“Oh, no, Woodrow,” Augustus said. “We won more than our share with the natives. They didn’t invite us here, you know. We got no call to be vengeful. You start that and I’ll spoil your appetite.”
― Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove

“I've just served five years in a great war —the only struggle that still interests me is the conflict with the sentence, sir—the English sentence.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to like the everyday things like soft beds and buttermilk- and feisty gentlemen.”
― Larry McMurtry

“She's had an ordeal but she's young... She won't forget it, but she might outlive it" - Gus Mccrae”
― Larry Mcmultry