Cowboy Way Quotes & Sayings

When we were five, they asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up. Our answers were thing like astronaut, president, or in my case ... princess.
When we were ten, they asked again and we answered - rock star, cowboy, or in my case, gold medalist. But now that we've grown up, they want a serious answer. Well, how 'bout this: who the hell knows?!
This isn't the time to make hard and fast decisions, its time to make mistakes. Take the wrong train and get stuck somewhere chill. Fall in love - a lot. Major in philosophy 'cause there's no way to make a career out of that. Change your mind. Then change it again, because nothing is permanent.
So make as many mistakes as you can. That way, someday, when they ask again what we want to be ... we won't have to guess. We'll know.
[from the movie] — Stephenie Meyer

Despite his attractiveness, Sandie couldn't have been more disappointed. She lamented, thinking that she should have known that it would have just been another stupid cowboy like her father to show up. Still, she couldn't help but hope that he would be some sort of comfort, even if only as company and a hand with the sometimes back-breaking work. He certainly was easy on the eyes, and his warm smile conveyed a sort of gentleness that was almost entirely foreign to her. The way he extended his hand earnestly, even removing his hat when walking up to her, made her feel respected and appreciated. — Alaria Thorne

His eyes are cold and restless
His wounds have almost healed
And she'd give half of Texas
Just to change the way he feels
She knows his love's in Tulsa
And she knows he's gonna go
Well it ain't no woman flesh and blood
It's that damned old rodeo


Well it's bulls and blood
It's dust and mud
It's the roar of a Sunday crowd
It's the white in his knuckles
The gold in the buckle
He'll win the next go 'round
It's boots and chaps
It's cowboy hats
It's spurs and latigo
It's the ropes and the reins
And the joy and the pain
And they call the thing rodeo


She does her best to hold him
When his love comes to call
But his need for it controls him
And her back's against the wall
And it's So long girl I'll see you
When it's time for him to go
You know the woman wants her cowboy
Like he wants his rodeo — Garth Brooks

I'm your ride out to the Double T," Beau said, gripping the edge of his white straw cowboy hat and tipping it in a cordial gesture. She ground the heels of her low pumps into the soft tar to contain her growing irritation. Did he think she was an idiot? "No way. — Lisa Mondello

I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate. — Adam Ross

In New Haven, Conn., when I was growing up, there were two sorts of Irish. There were the "drugstore cowboy" micks, who hung around the Elm Street poolroom over Longley's Lunch. And there were the earnest young Irishmen who fought their way up from the Grand Avenue saloonkeeper backgrounds of their fathers, went through Yale Law School, and have now found high place by the preferment of local politics or in the teaching profession. — James T. Farrell

Bailey, wait."

She didn't even turn his way again, simply flung her hand up and flipped her middle finger up at him. Damn her stubborn pride and damn his addled brain. — T.J. Kline

Sometimes you've got to get a machete and hack your way through the kudzu to make your own path in life. — Carolyn Brown

The cowboys have a way of trussing up a steer or a pugnacious bronco which fixes the brute so that it can neither move nor think. This is the hog-tie, and it is what Euclid did to geometry. — Eric Bell

But it doesn't happen that way, I keep telling myself knowingly and sadly. Only in our fraternity pledges and masonic inductions, our cowboy movies and magazine stories, not in our real-life lives. For, the seventeenth-century humanist to the contrary, each man is an island complete unto himself, and as he sinks, the moving feet go on around him, from nowhere to nowhere and with no time to lose. The world is long past the Boy Scout stage of its development; now each man dies as he was meant to die, and as he was born, and as he lived: alone, all alone. Without any God, without any hope, without any record to show for his life.
("New York Blues") — Cornell Woolrich

Amy Martin (ladysky) and Daniel Baciagalupo had a month to spend on Charlotte Turner's island in Georgian Bay; it was their wilderness way of getting to know each other before their life together in Toronto began. We don't always have a choice how we get to know one another. Sometimes, people fall into our lives cleanly
as if out of the sky, or as if there were a direct flight from Heaven to Earth
the same sudden way we lose people, who once seemed they would always be part of our lives.
Little Joe was gone, but not a day passed in Daniel Baciagalupo's life when Joe wasn't loved or remembered. The cook had been murdered in his bed, but Dominic Baciagalupo had had the last laugh on the cowboy. Ketchum's left hand would lvie forever in Twisted River, and Six-Pack had known what to do with the rest of her old friend — John Irving

I had an Indian face, but I never saw it as Indian, in part because in America the Indian was dead. The Indian had been killed in cowboy movies, or was playing bingo in Oklahoma. Also, in my middle-class Mexican family indio was a bad word, one my parents shy away from to this day. That's one of the reasons, of course, why I always insist, in my bratty way, on saying, Soy indio! - "I am an Indian!" — Richard Rodriguez

Listen, Bob. A gun is just a tool. No better and no worse than any other tool, a shovel- or an axe or a saddle or a stove or anything. Think of it always that way. A gun is as good- and as bad- as the man who carries it. Remember that. — Jack Schaefer

I grew up on a working ranch, and there was way too much to do."
"You what? A working ranch? Like ... a cowboy?"
Cam rolled his eyes. "I guess."
"You're a cowboy and a fireman?"
"Yes, Daniel," Cam said dryly. "It's almost as if I am half of the Village People, all rolled into one. — Z.A. Maxfield

The protagonist of Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours doesn't make it easy for us, channeling as he does Barry Hannah and Denis Johnson by way of Rick Bass and Dennis Hopper, and self-presenting as yet another damaged romantic who thinks it's always time to play the cowboy, skating in and out of sense. He can't see right, and he's haunted by nearly everything. He's trying to open up or shut himself down or at least get a hold of himself. He's trying to make do with what he's done, while he reminds us that we're all, one way or another, in that position. — Jim Shepard

I knew even if I'm a cowboy, I'm going to be involved in jazz in some way. — Dave Brubeck

I actually thought that the idea of doing a World War II movie in the guise of a spaghetti western would just be an interesting way to tackle it. Just even the way that the spaghetti westerns tackled the history of the Old West, I thought it could be a neat thing to do that with World War II, but just as opposed to using cowboy iconography, using World War II iconography as kind of the jumping-off point. — Quentin Tarantino

I'm South American, and growing up in New York, I had the total stereotypical way of thinking of what Texas was about. I'm like, Texas. Big. Cows. Cowboys. Cowboy hats and cowboy boots. And barbeque. — Paula Garces

A truck turned the corner and rumbled its way over to our house. I watched it parallel park, then go silent as the lights switched off. The driver's side door opened, and my best friend, Matthew, stepped down. His cowboy boots thudded against the asphalt, then crunched across the gravel that covered our front yard. "Howdy," he said. I — E.M. Tippetts

A new cologne is coming out. It's for cowboys, and it's made from cow's manure. That way the women will be on you like flies! — Bill Maher

Mistake number one: don't ever expect a woman to do what you think she's going to do.
Mistake number two: don't ever tell her what to do because that's a surefire way of making sure she doesn't. - cowboy John — Ridley Pearson

She'll never be all the way tame, just the way she's made ... sorta like you, I imagine." - Cowboy McKennon Kelly ponders Cowgirl in Training Devon Brooke — Carly Kade

I found a treehouse. I found this weird tree, out in a field, and someone had put a piece of a fence, way up in a tree. I just went up there and went to sleep for a few hours, in full cowboy regalia. And someone did take a photo. I have a photo of it, somewhere. It brought me back to when I was 12 years old, sitting in a treehouse and imagining that I was in a Western somewhere. — James Badge Dale

We are rough men and used to rough ways. — Bob Younger

I grew up in southeastern Oklahoma on a working cattle ranch, and it was always very romantic to me: The West, the cowboy, the Western way of life. — Reba McEntire

When I got home, I told my dad the truth about Yazzie; I told him that he had belonged to Don and Nettie's grandson who was going into the Marine Corps, and he had given him to me because he couldn't keep him. Truth without embellishment, although one could argue that it was slightly abbreviated. My dad didn't seem to care where I'd gotten him.

"I've been thinking about getting a dog around here." My dad cooed as well as a gravely cowboy can. "He's a good boy, oh yes he is! He's a little beauty!"

What was it about babies and puppies that made everyone talk with their lips pushed out in that kissy-faced way? I left Yazzie in my dad's enthusiastic care and climbed up to my room — Amy Harmon

We are continuing to look for ways that we can do something that's good for both of us. Good for both of us being the Cowboys relative to relief as to our cap management and good for him that would maybe be some pluses for him on his contract. — Jerry Jones

I won't let anyone talk to my wife that way, Gray said, his voice with a steely edge. I know that underneath that expensive tux you're nothing but a mama's boy sucking off your father's money and looking for a wealthy woman to keep you doing nothing for the rest of your life. I just want you to understand that beneath my tux is a rough and tumble cowboy who will kick your ever-loving ass to hell and back if you ever talk about my wife in derogatory terms again. — Carla Cassidy

Nicole Powell of Decatur, Georgia, was off-limits to hot cowboy lawyers. There was no way in hell she was going to return home with her tail between her legs all because she'd let him put HIS there. — Victoria Vane

A cowboy huh? I would rather be who I am now. I never had dreams of being anything but an Alpha. Besides, cowboys ride horses...wolves ride women! There's much more fun to be had that way. CADE — M. Corchis

First buy a cowboy hat and boots. Then you're on your way to being a Texan. — James A. Michener

Sometimes it's difficult because you like some regularity in your life, but never knowing who's gonna pop up at what show, what person you might see that you don't expect to see in that city, what problem you're gonna have that night, even the problems at some of these venues, if you look at them the right way, it's an adventure. You're like a cowboy. That's the best part about being in the music industry. You get your gun and you ride your horse. — Colin Munroe

He shoved her feet down to the floor, slid down the sofa, and cupped her face in his hands.
She barely had time to moisten her lips and shut her eyes before his mouth closed in to claim hers in a fiery hot kiss. She felt as if her whole body was floating off the sofa toward the ceiling. His hands on her cheeks were the only thing that kept her grounded. Her arms went around his neck. Both hands twisted into his hair for better leverage as his tongue found its way past her lips to do a beautiful two-step with hers.
Sweet Jesus! A kiss had never done that to her before. She wanted more ... — Carolyn Brown

Could I be jealous of the way he was touching my horse? Yep ... I was. — Carly Kade

But look at it this way," Stevie Rae broke in. "Aphrodite figured it out. So are you sayin' she's smarter than you?"
Kramisha's eyes narrowed."I got a whole world of smart than that rich white girl don't know nothin' about."
"Well than cowboy up. — P.C. Cast

You let me kiss you, but you won't let me take you out on a date." He shook his head. "Maybe I'm going about this the wrong way. Maybe I need to convince you that you can't live without me."
She raised her brows. "How are you going to do that?"
"I'll show you." He pressed closer as his hands roamed down her body. "But it might take all night. That okay with you?"
"I've got nowhere else to be ... — Cat Johnson

A gray V-neck T-shirt hugged his wide shoulders and broad chest, then hung loose over his tight abdomen. a pair of worn Levi's lovingly cupped his generous package, embraced long legs, and broke across the tops of well-worn cowboy boots. Jackson had the type of physique that made a woman's girl parts tingle. She'd have to be dead not to include herself in that party. Especially since her girl parts had been told "No" way too many time sin recent years. — Candis Terry

You can see where it's going. The extraordinary political apathy that followed Watergate and Vietnam and the institutionalization of grass-roots rebellion among minorities will only deepen. Politics is about consensus, and the advertising legacy of the sixties is that consensus is repression. Voting'll be unhip: Americans now vote with their wallets. Government's only cultural role will be as the tyrannical parent we both hate and need. Look for us to elect someone who can cast himself as a Rebel, maybe even a cowboy, but who deep down we'll know is a bureaucratic creature who'll operate inside the government mechanism instead of naively bang his head against it the way we've watched poor Jimmy do for four years. — David Foster Wallace

When she entered the dining room, she tried to ignore Caleb's gaze on her. He wasn't outwardly leering, but she could feel the intensity coming from his direction as if he was sending heat-seeking missiles her way. She knew he wanted her. She might not have much experience with men, but she knew when one was interested and Caleb Ryder was. — Katie Reus

I don't like feeling sorry for myself. That's not who I am. And most of the time I don't feel that way. Instead, I am grateful for having at least found you. We could have flashed by one another like two pieces of cosmic dust.
God or the universe or whatever one chooses to label the great systems of balance and order does not recognize Earth-time. To the universe, four days is no different than four billion light years. I try to keep that in mind.
But, I am, after all, a man. And all the philosophic rationalizations I can conjure up do not keep me from wanting you, every day, every moment, the merciless wail of time, of time I can never spend with you, deep within my head.
I love you, profoundly and completely. And I always will.
The last cowboy,
Robert — Robert James Waller

En you show up to work and put on your undergarments, throw on your suspenders and your cowboy boots, throw some dirt on you, and then get on your spurs, you start to walk a bit different. When you put on your gun belts, you change again. You go through this whole transformation process. All that stuff changes you. Riding a horse changes the way you walk and your demeanor. — James Badge Dale

You're rich, spoiled and used to getting your own way."
"Not true. If I had my own way you would have kissed me and ridden me like a cowboy while screaming 'yeehaw'. — Dani Alexander

Deke met them on the porch and led the way into the house. Taller than the Dawson brothers, he was every bit as handsome with thick brown hair that he wore long enough to be sexy, hazel eyes, and broad shoulders. Women tended to flock to him like a moth to a burning candle. But taming Deke would be harder than training a Dawson cowboy to the halter. He was full of tough cowboy charm, and it would take a special woman to rope him and get him aimed toward the altar. — Carolyn Brown

All I can hope to do is instill great morality in my son and trust him along the way. The music he listens to or how he chooses to wear his hair doesn't define his moral compass, and if he wants to listen to country music and wear a cowboy hat too, that's fine. — Mark Hoppus

I can tell a good cowboy by the way he approaches a cow. — Henry Green

The table was set for two, as usual, with one exception. Right smack in the middle was an old chipped crock cookie jar. Glazing cracks started at the bottom and wove their way in different directions, some on the sides, with others winding their way around in circles.
"Are we having cookies with our waffles?" Jill asked.
"Look at it closely," Sawyer grinned, "Pay especially close attention to the lid."
"Daisies," She smiled.
"I would have gone out into the pasture and picked some wild ones for you, but it's the wrong time of year. That's all I could find with a daisy on it," Sawyer said — Carolyn Brown

Getting sweaty with a woman after some good sex was one thing, but he'd rather not start out that way. — Cat Johnson

I don't know what to say. This summer hasn't turned out at all the way I'd planned. I'm not supposed to be standing in the middle of a barn with a blue-eyed cowboy who's looking at me like he's about to kiss me. I shouldn't be wanting him to kiss me. — Cynthia Hand

Here's what I've learned about miracles: Sometimes they turn up quick, and sometimes they take their sweet time getting to you. It's hard to tell either way because a miracle never looks exactly the way you think it should. Some miracles are big and flashy, and others are sweet and simple. Some miracles make you want to shout, and others make you want to sing.
And some miracles, the very best miracles of all, show up wearing cowboy boots. — Natalie Lloyd

Shae-Lynn, come on. You know I didn't mean for it to happen that way. I was just trying to do right by you."

"Doing right by me would have been respecting my wishes and keeping your promises. Leave me alone, Billy. I don't want to be friends with someone I can't depend on. — D.R. Graham

A year here and he still dreamed of cyberspace, hope fading nightly. All the speed he took, all the turns he'd taken and the corners he cut in Night City, and he'd still see the matrix in his dreams, bright lattices of logic unfolding across that colourless void ... The Sprawl was a long, strange way home now over the Pacific, and he was no Console Man, no cyberspace cowboy. Just another hustler, trying to make it through. But the dreams came on in the Japanese night like livewire voodoo, and he'd cry for it, cry in his sleep, and wake alone in the dark, curled in his capsule in some coffin hotel, hands clawed into the bedslab, temper foam bunched between his fingers, trying to reach the console that wasn't there. — William Gibson

Omelets now or later?" she panted.
"Later than what?" he asked huskily.
"How hungry are you?"
"For what?"
She started unbuttoning his shirt at the top, stopping to admire and touch the soft hair on his chest on the way to the bottom. When she reached the last one, she tugged the tail out from behind his belt, slipped her arms around his body, and laid her cheek against his chest.
"Let's make love and only use words when necessary," she whispered.
"Is that a pickup line" he asked hoarsely. — Carolyn Brown