Wild West Quotes

“The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun…”
― Jim Morrison

“People in the West like to shoot things. When they first got to the West they shot buffalo. Once there were 70 million buffalo on the plains and then the people of the West started blasting away at them. Buffalo are just cows with big heads. If you've ever looked a cow in the face and seen the unutterable depths of trust and stupidity that lie within, you will be able to guess how difficult it must have been for people in the West to track down buffalo and shoot them to pieces. By 1895, there were only 800 buffalo left, mostly in zoos and touring Wild West shows. With no buffalo left to kill, Westerners started shooting Indians. Between 1850 and 1890 they reduced the number of Indians in America from two million to 90,000.

Nowadays, thank goodness, both have made a recovery. Today there are 30,000 buffalo and 300,000 Indiands, and of course you are not allowed to shoot either, so all the Westerners have left to shoot at are road signs and each other, both of which they do rather a lot. There you have a capsule history of the West.”
― Bill Bryson

“... and her name was Freedom.”
― Pam Muñoz Ryan, Riding Freedom

“He had seen the end of an era, the sunset of the pioneer. He had come upon it when already its glory was nearly spent. So in the buffalo times a traveller used to come upon the embers of a hunter's fire on the prairie, after the hunter was up and gone; the coals would be trampled out, but the ground was warm, and the flattened grass where he had slept and where his pony had grazed, told the story.
This was the very end of the road-making West; the men who had put plains and mountains under the iron harness were old; some were poor, and even the successful ones were hunting for a rest and a brief reprieve from death. It was already gone, that age; nothing could ever bring it back. The taste and smell and song of it, the visions those men had seen in the air and followed, - these he had caught in a kind of afterglow in their own faces, - and this would always be his.”
― Willa Cather, A Lost Lady

“Charged with the mission of operating beyond the boundaries of civilization with minimal support and no communication from higher authority, they lived and often died by the motto, 'Order first, then law will follow.”
― Thomas W. Knowles, They Rode for the Lone Star, Volume 1

“The forest is blanketed by the greenest ferns and moss and bonsai-like trees, a wild majesty that beckons hobbits and pixies and elves and dreamers.”
― Shannon M Mullen, See What Flowers

“Sam was staring at Claire with about the same amazement as his brother had shown. Claire didn’t seem to realize it, or else she was too preoccupied to think of it, but she was the second thunderbolt that had fallen on this long-hidebound household in as many days. First one of the hated race of doctors had been shoehorned in on them as the only thing that might get them out of an already nightmarish situation, and now this matter-of-fact slip of a girl had pushed into it of her own accord. They must have felt like the world was coming down around their ears.”
― Elisabeth Grace Foley, Left-Hand Kelly

“It occurred to Gavin that the first thought a groom had upon spying his bride shouldn’t be to wonder whether or not she wore knickers.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“I have come to the final judgment that I am not a man any longer. I am a figment, a concoction, an overblown invention born of low-grade whiskey and high-grade journalistic distortion; of street and saloon gossip and dime-novel bombast.”
― Richard Matheson, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok

“Chris asks, "What are you going to stick to?"

"Mah guns, boy, mah guns," I tell him. "That’s the Code of the West.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

“Samantha imagined that in another life, she and Alison could have, indeed, been friends.
Had she not been about to rob the train.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“Alison’s gaze gentled. “Tell me, Samantha, have you ever been to Scotland?”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“The lass was no damsel.
He’d prepared himself for a hard sell, one that might require a few extra knee-weakening smiles, perhaps so much as a seduction, but he’d never in a million years expected the disaster that landed his arms.
The disaster named Alison Ross.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“Tis best to weight the enemy more mighty than he seems.”
Or she, as was this particular case.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“This blood feud is a bit too Shakespearean, if ye want the truth. I’m no Montague, and ye’re no Capulet.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“Experience should have taught ye by now that denying me what I want only makes me more relentless.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“Some criminals said fighting Nox was like fighting ghosts. He seemed to come from everywhere. Most criminals who fought Nox never said anything at all.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Rustkiller

“All the while, that seemingly sympathetic sun was growing a little fiercer, smiling a little broader. Sometimes the land didn't have to get you. You got yourself.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Rustkiller

“Though her muscles went rigid, her tongue sparred with his, as he might have guessed it would. Each lick and swirl, each plunge and retreat became a point counted for or against.
Gavin had never enjoyed a woman’s mouth so much in his entire life.”
― Kerrigan Byrne, The Scot Beds His Wife

“That was the thing about bad dreams in the Wild North. You still had them when you woke up.”
― Dean F. Wilson, Coilhunter

“I’m sorry, Rob,” she said softly.

He grunted. “Sorry is a sorry word.”

-A Desperate Journey”
― Debra Parmley, A Desperate Journey

“Then she saw him walking from the barn to the bunkhouse.


Hardworking Rob, who did so much for her and never asked for anything in return. Here she’d been indulging herself, enjoying the fancy soap, the nice nightgown and he was still working. Working to provide a place for them to stay. 


He looked up and she raised her hand to wave to him, longing to tell him all she felt in her heart and didn’t know how to put into words. She wanted to say come look at the moon with me, let me wash your hands and your tired face, let me ease your boots off and rest. Rest here with me.

He stopped and stared at her almost as if he’d read her thoughts. 

- A Desperate Journey”
― Debra Parmley, A Desperate Journey

“My father had seen in a flash that they were all gunmen, so he told me to stand still, although we were right in a possible line of fire. If near a gun-fight and the weapons are wielded by amateurs, run for your life; if professionals are handling the trigger, stand still — they know where they are shooting.”
― William S. Hart, My Life East & West

“Thunderation.” His fingers tightened on the cup.

She rushed over. “Where does it hurt? Are you in pain? Is there anything I can do?”

He gazed up into her eyes. “I don’t know if you can give me what I need.” 
His steady gaze impaled her.

Silence loomed between them like a heavy mist and the room felt warm and heavy. 
A clock chimed. It would be time for the funeral soon. 


- A Desperate Journey”
― Debra Parmley, A Desperate Journey

“Moss should’ve realized the absolute worst way to make sure Sally stayed in the room was to vehemently object to her leaving.

- A Desperate Journey”
― Debra Parmley, A Desperate Journey

“The onlookers had seen not three men in the fire, but four. God hadn’t taken them out of the fiery trial. He’d walked with them through it.”
― Jody Hedlund, A Cowboy for Keeps

“Brody had faced death enough to know he was facing it again. But for the first time in a long time, he wasn't ready to die.”
― Jody Hedlund, To Tame a Cowboy

“Tom Mix was born in Pennsylvania, and when he was ten years old his parents took him to see Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West. It changed young Tom forever. He took his mother’s clothesline and taught himself rope tricks. He took scraps from around the house and made his own “cowboy outfit.” And when he was finally old enough, he lit out for the rapidly vanishing West, ready to leave a mark as distinctive as Buffalo Bill or Wyatt Earp before it was gone forever.”
― Scott McCrea, Savage Mesa: A Western Adventure Novel

“Marshals and gunmen.
Shootouts in the western sun.
Vultures always eat.”
― Dean Koontz

“My woman is worth the world to me,” Boone replied. He hadn’t moved or lowered the weapon. “My brother, there, means plenty too. The last time you came around, I was flat on my back, near death, but I’m alive and well.”
― Lee Ann Sontheimer Murphy, The Legacy of Boone Wilson