Best Gunsmoke Quotes & Sayings

By all the rules of modern fiction there should have been gunsmoke mingling its acrid blue with the brown haze of corral dust. Dead men should have fallen and been trampled ...
Nothing of this sort happened. — B.M. Bower

What made us different from other westerns was the fact that 'Gunsmoke' wasn't just action and a lot of shooting; they were character-study shows. — James Arness

No, Bigfoot . . . no, you know what I think you really are? Is you're the LAPD's own Charlie Manson. You're the screamin evil nutcase right at the heart of that li'l cop kingdom, that nothin and nobody can reach, and God help 'em if you wake up someday in a mood to bring it all down, 'cause then it'll be run copper run, and when the gunsmoke clears, there'll be songbirds building their nests in all the empty corners of the Glass House. Plus broken glass and shit — Thomas Pynchon

Years ago on the set of Gunsmoke I read the book The Holy Science. Since then I have not eaten meat. — Dennis Weaver

When I was a kid growing up, there might be 10 shows on the air that had been on for ten seasons or eleven seasons. 'Gunsmoke' ran for over twenty years. — Rocky Carroll

I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'
'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'
'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'
'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.
'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.
'You're a God?' said Shadow.
Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said. — Neil Gaiman

I don't sit around and wait for great parts. I'm an actress, and I love being one, and I'll probably be doing it till I'm 72, standing around the back lot doing 'Gunsmoke.' — Suzanne Pleshette

Our gazes struck like flint and steel. And I realized that gunsmoke smell wasn't ozone. It was us. We burned. — Leah Raeder

I really miss Gunsmoke. It was like losing my whole family. — Ken Curtis

I'm really proud of Gunsmoke. We put on a good show every week - one that families could all watch together without offending anyone. — Ken Curtis

Cobb was in a Klan group back in the 60's, and told me stories about how they used to throw live 'coons, possums, porcupines, or ganders into Black houses at night in attempts to run them out of Johnston and Harnett County. Cobb said that late one night, he and three or four other local rednecks snuck up on the house of one Black family, peered through the window and saw a huge Black woman sitting in front of a TV watching Gunsmoke, with a gang of children all around her.
The window was open and Cobb threw a live possum in her lap. Cobb said she squalled about the loudest and longest he'd ever heard, and jumped about four feet up in the air. Cobb then ran and jumped into a nearby ditch to observe what would happen next, and it wasn't long before they saw the Black woman bust out of the back door and run across a cotton field with a trail of children behind. Cobb said she was as wide as three rows of cotton, but fast and agile. She outran all the young'uns. — Frazier Glenn Miller