“It is sometimes the minor, not the major, characters in a novel who hold the author's affection longest. It may be that one loses affection for the major characters because they suck off so much energy as one pushes them through their lives.”

“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.”

“. . . he had learned in his years of tracking Indians that things which seemed impossible often weren't. They only became so if one thought about them too much so that fear took over.”

“But, if one cuts more deeply, the lonesome dove is Newt, a lonely teenager who is the unacknowledged son of Captain Call and a kindly whore named Maggie, who is now dead. So the central theme of the novel is not the stocking of Montana but unacknowledged paternity. All of the Hat Creek Outfit, including particularly Augustus McCrae, want Call to accept the boy as his son.”

“The reason men are so awful is because some woman has spoiled them.”

“Live through it," Call said. "That's all we can do.”

“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.”