Lonesome Dove

by Larry McMurtry

surprised at how fast life could suck you along; that morning he had awoke with no plans except to be a cowboy, and now he was about to become a man-killer,

Deets slapped his leg and laughed, the thought was so funny. When the rest of the outfit finally wandered down from the house they found the two of them grinning back and forth at one another. “Look at ’em,” Augustus said. “You’d think they just discovered teeth.”

It was an odd thing, but true, that the death of an enemy could affect you as much almost as much as the death of a friend.

He had known several men who blew their heads off, and he had pondered it much. It seemed to him it was probably because they could not take enough happiness just from the sky and the moon to carry them over the low feelings that came to all men.

“I don’t expect no mercy,” July said. “I just wish things would go wrong one at a time. That way I believe I could handle it.”

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 grow sour.

“Life in San Francisco is still just life. If you want one thing too much it’s likely to be a disappointment. The healthy way is to learn to like the everyday things, like soft beds and buttermilk—and feisty gentlemen.”

“I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”

Better by far never to have known the pleasure than to have the pain that followed.

He wondered if all men felt such disappointment when thinking of themselves. He didn’t know. Maybe most men didn’t think of themselves.

They don’t know it, but the wrath of the Lord is about to descend upon them. I dislike bold criminals of whatever race, and I believe I’ll go see that they pay their debts.”

Only the devil is worse and the devil won’t bother us on this trip.”

It’s like I told you last night, son. The earth is mostly just a boneyard. “But pretty in the sunlight,”

“I’ll say this for you, Suggs, you’re the kind of son of a bitch it’s a pleasure to hang,” Augustus said. “If guff’s all you can talk, go talk it to the devil.”

It was wearying, trying to adjust to all the paces life required.

“The dead can help us if we let them, and if they want to,”