Comanche Moon Quotes

“Buffalo Hump knew his son was brave, but that was not enough. If a warrior lacked wisdom, courage alone would not keep him alive for long.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“See this page of paper? It’s blank,” Scull said. “That, sir, is the most frightening battlefield in the world: the blank page. I mean to fill this paper with decent sentences, sir—this page and hundreds like it. Let me tell you, Colonel, it’s harder than fighting Lee. Why, it’s harder than fighting Napoleon. It requires unremitting attention,”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“The thing that Buffalo Hump was most grateful for, as he rode into the emptiness, was the knowledge that in the years of his youth and manhood he had drawn the lifeblood of so many enemies. He had been a great killer; it was his way and the way of his people; no one in his tribe had killed so often and so well. The killings were good to remember, as he rode his old horse deeper into the llano, away from all the places where people came.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“I suppose she's just dying of living--that's the one infection that strikes us all down, sooner or later.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“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 Buffalo Hump. He had seen it before, with other warriors. Someone would say one word too many, would fail to see the snake in his father's eyes, and the next moment Buffalo Hump would be pulling his long bloody knife from between the other warrior's ribs.

Blue Duck waited. He knew that it was not a day to fight his father.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“The buffalo will return," Kicking Wolf said. "They have only gone to the north for a while. The buffalo have always returned."

"You are a fool," Buffalo Hump said. "The buffalo won't return, because they are dead. The whites have killed them. When you go north you will only find their bones."

"The whites have killed many, but not all," Kicking Wolf insisted. "They have only gone to the Missouri River to live. When beaten the whites back we have they will return."

But, as he was speaking, Kicking Wolf suddenly lost heart. He realized that Buffalo Hump was right, and that the words he had just spoken were the words of a fool. The Comanches were not beating the whites, and they were not going to beat them. Only their own band and three or four others were still free Comanches. The bands that were free were the bands that could survive on the least, those who would eat small animals and dig roots from the earth. Already the bluecoat soldiers had come back to Texas and begun to fill up the old forts, places they had abandoned while they fought one another. Even if all the free tribes banded together there would not be enough warriors to defeat the bluecoat soldiers. With the buffalo gone so far north, the white soldiers had only to drive them farther and farther into the llano, until they starved or gave up.

"The whites are not foolish," Buffalo Hump said. "They know that it is easier to kill a buffalo than it is to kill one of us. They know that if they kill all the buffalo we will starve – then they won't have to fight us. Those who don't want to starve will have to go where the whites want to put them."

The two men sat in silence for a while. Some young men were racing their horses a little farther down the canyon. Kicking Wolf usually took a keen interest in such contests. He wanted to know which horses were fastest. But today he didn't care. He felt too sad.

"The medicine men are deceiving the young warriors when they tell them the buffalo will return," Buffalo Hump said. "If any buffalo come back they will only be ghost buffalo. Their ghosts might return because they remember these lands. But that will not help us. We cannot eat their ghosts.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“When Famous Shoes finished his song he noticed that the young white man was asleep. During the day he had not trusted enough, and had worn himself out with pointless scurryings. Perhaps even then the song he had just sung was working in the young man’s dreams; perhaps as he grew older he would learn to trust mysteries and not fear them. Many white men could not trust things unless they could be explained; and yet the most beautiful things, such as the trackless flight of birds, could never be explained.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“There’s no remedy for bad luck, is there?” he said, addressing the question to no one in particular. “If Watson hadn’t raised his arm just when he did, the worst he would have gotten out of this episode would have been a broken arm. But he lifted his gun and the bullet had a clear path to his vitals. I’ll miss the man. He was someone to talk wives with.” “What, sir?” Augustus asked. The remark startled him. “Wives, Mr. McCrae,” Inish Scull said. “You’re a bachelor. I doubt you can appreciate the fascination of the subject—but James Watson appreciated it. He was on his third wife when he had the misfortune to catch his dying. He and I could talk wives for hours.” “Well, but what happened to his wives?” Long Bill inquired. “I’m a married man. I’d like to know.” “One died, one survives him, and the one in the middle ran off with an acrobat,” the Captain said. “That’s about average for wives, I expect. You’ll find that out soon enough, Mr. McCrae, if you take it into your head to marry.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“Twice he had been hit by arrows and once shot in the flank by Ahumado, a felonious foe more hated by Captain Scull than either Kicking Wolf or Buffalo Hump. Ahumado, known as the Black Vaquero, was a master of ambush; he had shot down at the Captain from a tiny pocket of a cave, in a sheer cliff in Mexico.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“All night Famous Shoes sat listening. He heard the plover cry several more times, and rejoiced. Men lied often, but the plover only lied when it had eggs to protect; if the plover’s nest was near, then water, too, was near. In the morning they could drink.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“It wasn’t merely damage done by the sun that was causing him to slip suddenly into Greek; it was the Scull dementia, damage from the broken seed. His father, Evanswood Scull, intermittently mad but a brilliant linguist, used to stomp into the nursery, thundering out passages in Latin, Greek, Icelandic, and Old Law French, a language which it was said that he was the only man in America to have a thorough mastery”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“As they were riding north, Buffalo Hump brought up the matter of his name again. “People who are named for parts of the body can only be jokesters and clowns,” Buffalo Hump told him. “Look at Straight Elbow—his name ruined him. If you were named for your scrotum it would be the same. No matter how hard you fought in battle, people would get tickled when they said your name. Soon you would forget about being brave. It would be enough that you were funny. You would only be a clown.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“If you get scalped, don’t sit around yowling, either,” Gus McCrae said. “People survive scalpings fine if they don’t yowl.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“Maybe," Gus said. "We've had a lot of practice, going on expeditions for nothing. That's how it mostly turned out. You ride awhile in one direction and then you turn around and ride back.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“The coyote was moving purposely; perhaps it smelled the cooking meat too.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“Buffalo Hump wanted to see the ocean because the ocean would always be as it was. Few things could stay forever in the way they were when the spirits made them. Even the great plains of grass, the home of the People, would not be always as it had been. The whites would bring their plows and scar the earth; they would their put cattle on it and the cattle would bring the ugly mesquite trees. The grass that had been high forever would be trampled and torn. The llano would not be always as it had been. The ocean and the stars were eternal, things whose power and mystery were greater than the powers of men.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“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

“He behaved like the old ones behaved; the old ones, too, would go to any lengths to learn some useful fact about the animals or the birds. They would figure that someone might need to know those facts; they themselves might not need to, but their children might, or their grandchildren might.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“also many of them were, to Augustus’s way of thinking, excessively pious. Some kept no liquor in their houses at all, and, on several occasions when he had been invited in for a meal, the grace was said at such length that he had all but lost his appetite before anyone was allowed to eat.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“Though a Kickapoo, the man had respect for the old ways. He behaved like the old ones behaved; the old ones, too, would go to any lengths to learn some useful fact about the animals or the birds. They would figure that someone might need to know those facts; they themselves might not need to, but their children might, or their grandchildren might.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“I guess we could pile some rocks on her," Call said. "I hate just to leave a body laying out."
"Woodrow, she's mostly et anyway," Gus said. "Why spoil the buzzards' picnic?”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“I don’t know,” Goyeto said. “This is not a very strong sun.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon

“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 boresome. You tup your wife a thousand times and that becomes an office task, too.”
― Larry McMurtry, Comanche Moon