“I'm sure partial to the evening,' Augustus said. 'The evening and the morning. If we just didn't have to have the rest of the dern day I'd be a lot happier.”

“Who asked them dern pigs?” he said. “I guess they tracked us,” Augustus said. “They’re enterprising pigs.”

“Jake, you’re a dern grasshopper,” Augustus said. “You ride in yesterday talking Montana, and today you’re talking California.”

“Dern, I hate cooking with shit. -- Augustus McCrae to Lorena Wood”

“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.”

“Deets slapped his leg and laughed, the thought was so funny. When the rest of the outfit finally wondered 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.”

“WHEN AUGUSTUS CAME OUT on the porch the blue pigs were eating a rattlesnake—not a very big one. It had probably just been crawling around looking for shade when it ran into the pigs. They were having a fine tug-of-war with it, and its rattling days were over.”