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"Claudine hunched her shoulders. 'I don't see how you live up there with them.'
'You aren't aware of them. You work with them, eat by and with them, ride the buses with them, and you aren't aware of them unless you want to be. I don't know that a great big fat Negro man's been sitting beside me on a bus until I get up to leave. You just don't notice it.'
'Well, I certainly noticed it. You must be blind or something.'
Blind, that's what I am. I never opened my eyes. I never thought to look into people's hearts, I looked only in their faces. Stone blind ... Mr. Stone. Mr. Stone set a watchman in church yesterday. He should have provided me with one. I need a watchman to lead me around and declare what he seeth every hour on the hour. I need a watchman to tell me this is what a man says but this is what he means, to draw a line down the middle and say here is this justice and there is that justice and make me understand the difference." — p. 130
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" 'What was it Bigfoot said about shooting out your brains?' he asked Gus, his lanky pal.
Gus had run down four pages of the Major's lengthy letter. Call had three pages. Gus didn't seem to be particularly concerned about the prospect of Comanche capture—his nonchalant approach to life could be irksome in times of conflict.
'I'd go help Matty clean her turtle if I thought she'd give me a poke,' Gus said.
'Gus, there's Indians coming,' Call said. 'Just tell me what Bigfoot said about shooting out your brains.
'That whore don't need no help with that turtle,' he added.
'Oh, you're supposed to shoot through the eyeball,' Gus said. 'I'll be damned if I would, though. I need both eyes to look at whores.' " — p. 21
"The fertile country lasted only three miles. By the fourth mile, only the smallest scrub grew. Soon even that disappeared—before them, as far ahead as they could see, was a land where nothing grew.
'This is the dead man's walk,' Captain Salazar said. 'Now we will see who wants to live and who wants to die.' " — p. 312
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" ' ... we're captains now, Woodrow,' Augustus said. 'You heard the Governor. He said we're the future of Texas.'
'I heard him,' Call said. 'I just don't know what he meant.'
'Why, it means we're fine fellows,' Augustus said.
'How would he know that?' Call asked. 'He's never even seen us before today.'
'Now, Woodrow—don't be contrary,' Gus said. 'He's the governor, and a governor can figure things out quicker than other folks. If he says we're the future of Texas, then I expect it's so.'
'I ain't being contrary,' Call said. 'But I still don't know what he meant.' " — p. 182
" 'I doubt we can do this job—where are we going now?' Gus asked.
'To the Rio Grande,' Call replied.
'To the Rio Grande and then what—is Captain King a fish?' Gus asked.
'No, but there's a town there where we might be able to find him,' Call said. 'At least I guess it's at a town.'
'Well, if it's a town, is it on a map—does it have a name?' Gus asked, impatiently. 'Is it on this side of the river, or is it an island or what?'
'It's probably a town,' Call said. 'There's a saloon there owned by a man named Wanz—I think he's a Frenchman.'
'Oh, if it's got a saloon, let's go,' Augustus said. 'In fact, let's hurry. We'll give the saloon a thorough inspection—then we'll worry about Captain King. What's the name of this place?'
'Lonesome Dove—that's its name,' Call said." — p. 423
"Late in the night, while the young ranger dozed, Famous Shoes heard some geese flying overhead, and he began to sing a long song about birds. Of course he sang the song in his own Kickapoo tongue, which the young white man could not understand. Famous Shoes knew that the words of the song would be mysterious to the young man, who had awakened to listen, but he sang anyway. That things were mysterious did not make them less valuable. The mystery of the northward-flying geese had always haunted him; he thought the geese might be flying to the edge of the world, so he made a song about them, for no mystery was stronger to Famous Shoes than the mystery of birds. All the animals that he knew left tracks, but the geese, when they spread their wings to fly northward, left no tracks. Famous Shoes thought that the geese must know where the gods lived, and because of their knowledge had been exempted by the gods from having to make tracks. The gods would not want to be visited by just anyone who found a track, but their messengers, the great birds, were allowed to visit them. It was a wonderful thing, a thing Famous Shoes never tired of thinking about." — p. 546
"Augustus had always enjoyed calendars and almanacs—he rarely journeyed out of Austin without an almanac in his saddlebag. If he did any reading at night around the campfire it was usually just a page or two of the current almanac. Often he wold discover that, on the very day he was living, the signs of the zodiac were in disorder, causing dire things to be predicted. If the predictions were especially dire—hurricanes, earthquakes, floods—Gus would amuse himself by reading aloud about the catastrophes that were due to start happening at any moment. If he saw a heavy cloud building up he would inform the men that it was probably the harbinger of a forty-day flood that would probably drown them all. Many of the rangers were unable to sleep, after one of Gus's readings; those who knew a few letters would borrow the almanac and peer at the prophetic passages, only to discover that Augustus had not misread. The terrible predictions were there, and, inasmuch as they were printed, must be true. When nothing happened, no flood, no earthquake, no sulphurous fire, Augustus suavely explained that they had been spared due to a sudden shifting in the stars.
'Now you see the planet Jupiter, right up there,' he would say, pointing straight up into the million-starred Milky Way; he knew that most of the men would not want to admit that they had no idea which star Jupiter might be.
'Well, Jupiter went into eclipse—I believe it was a double eclipse—you won't see that again in your lifetime, and it's all that saved us,' he would conclude. 'Otherwise you'd see a wall of water eighty feet high coming right at us,' he would remark, to his awed listeners, some of whom thought that the mere fact that he was a captain meant that he understood such things." — p. 565
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"[Mary to Lydia] 'Far be it from me, my dear sister, to depreciate such pleasures. They would doubtless be congenial with the generality of female minds. But I confess they would have no charms for me. I should infinitely prefer a book.' " — p. 252
"[Mr. Darcy to Elizabeth] 'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.' " — p. 399
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Andrew wrote: ""I should infinitely prefer a book." -- I would have highlighted that line, if I weren't listening to the audiobook version. (That's the problem with audiobooks. No way to highlight the good bits...)"I totally underlined that today!!! Mary is actually the character I think I most identify with!
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Larissa—I adore Mary. I wish she'd had a larger part in the story. I'd like to know what became of her. Did she ever find a man that appreciated her remarkable intellect or was she content being single?
Great American Read List
Books mentioned in this topic
Pride and Prejudice (other topics)Comanche Moon (other topics)
Dead Man's Walk: The Powerful Prequel to Lonesome Dove Set in 1840s Texas (other topics)
Go Set a Watchman (other topics)
To Kill A Mockingbird (other topics)
More...
Authors mentioned in this topic
Jane Austen (other topics)Larry McMurtry (other topics)
Larry McMurtry (other topics)
Harper Lee (other topics)
Harper Lee (other topics)
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"Summer was on the way; Jem and I awaited it with impatience. Summer was our best season: it was sleeping on the back screened porch in cots, or trying to sleep in the treehouse; summer was everything good to eat; it was a thousand colors in a parched landscape; but most of all, summer was Dill." — p. 39
" ' ... sometimes we have to make the best of things, and the way we conduct ourselves when the chips are down—well, all I can say is, when you and Jem are grown, maybe you'll look back on this with some compassion and some feeling that I didn't let you down. This case, Tom Robinson's case, is something that goes to the essence of a man's conscience—Scout, I couldn't go to church and worship God if I didn't try to help that man.'
'Atticus, you must be wrong. ... '
'How's that?'
'Well, most folks seem to think they're right and you're wrong. ... '
'They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions,' said Atticus, 'but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience.' " — p. 110
" ' ... I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do. Mrs. Dubose won, all ninety-eight pounds of her. According to her views, she died beholden to nothing and nobody. She was the bravest person I ever knew.' " — p. 117
" ' ... there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal.
I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.' " — p. 209