Charles Portis Quotes

Now the drummers did not rush out to grab Chaney or shoot him but instead scattered like poultry while Chaney took my father's purse from his warm body and ripped open the trouser band and took the gold pieces too. I cannot say how he knew about them. When he finished his thieving he raced to the end of the street and struck the night watchman at the stock barn a fierce blow to the mouth with his rifle stock, knocking him silly. He put a bridle on Papa's horse Judy and rode out bareback. Darkness swallowed him up. He might have taken the time to saddle the horse or hitched up three spans of mules to a Concord stagecoach and smoked a pipe as it seems no one in that city was after him. He had mistaken the drummers for men.

Most girls like play pretties, but you like guns, don’t you?
I don't care a thing in the world about guns. If I did I would have one that worked.

You do not think much of me, do you, Cogburn?
I don't think about you at all when your mouth is closed.

I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.

I never seen anybody from Texas I couldn't shade. Get cross-ways of me, LaBoeuf, and you will think a thousand of brick has fell on you. You will wisht you had been at the Alamo with Travis.

People do not give it credence that a fourteen-year-old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day. I was just fourteen years of age when a coward going by the name of Tom Chaney shot my father down in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and robbed him of his life and his horse and $150 in cash money plus two California gold pieces that he carried in his trouser band.

I have known some horses and a good many more pigs who I believe harbored evil intent in their hearts. I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces?

I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hanged in Fort Smith at Judge Parker's convenience! Which will you have?
I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man!
Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!

If in four months I could not find Tom Chaney with a mark on his face like banished Cain I would not undertake to advise others how to do it.

I have never been one to flinch or crawfish when faced with an unpleasant task.

Time just gets away from us.

I know what they said even if they would not say it to my face. People love to talk. They love to slander you if you have any substance. They say I love nothing but money and the Presbyterian Church and that is why I never married.

If you want anything done right you will have to see to it yourself every time.

Nothing I like to do pays well.

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.