Charles Portis Quotes

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.

As he drank, little brown drops of coffee clung to his mustache like dew. Men will live like billy goats if they are let alone.

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.

Time just gets away from us.

I have left off crying, and giggling as well. Now make up your mind. I don't care anything for all this talk. You told me what your price for the job was and I have come up with it. Here is the money. I aim to get Tom Chaney and if you are not game I will find somebody who is game. All I have heard out of you so far is talk. I know you can drink whiskey and I have seen you kill a gray rat. All the rest has been talk. They told me you had grit and that is why I came to you. I am not paying for talk. I can get all the talk I need and more at the Monarch boardinghouse.

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

Nothing I like to do pays well.

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

My life is over, for all practical purposes. I no longer have enough money to keep a women.

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

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!

You must pay for everything in this world one way and another. There is nothing free except the Grace of God. You cannot earn that or deserve it.

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.

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.

Tom Chaney rode his gray horse that was better suited to pulling a middlebuster than carrying a rider. He had no hand gun but he carried his rifle slung across his back on a piece of cotton plow line. There is trash for you. He could have taken an old piece of harness and made a nice leather strap for it. That would have been too much trouble.