Quotes from Fred Gipson

What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem might cruel and unfair, but that's how life is a part of the time. But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad

Well, when you're fourteen years old, you can't afford to mix in a rock fight with your five-year-old brother. You can't do it, even when you're in the right. You just can't explain a thing like that to your folks. All they'll do is point out how much bigger you are, how unfair it is to your little brother.

was trembling

I remember like yesterday how he strayed in out of nowhere to our log cabin on Birdsong Creek. He made me so mad at first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks.

But that isn't the only way life is. A part of the time, it's mighty good. And a man can't afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad…. You understand?

Now nothing was left hanging to the pole but the frazzled ends of the snapped blades.

What on earth, boys!

Old Yeller.

I reached in and let him lick my hand. 'Yeller,' I said, 'I'll be back. I'm promising that I'll be back.

You're getting to be a big boy; and while I'm gone, you'll be the man of the family. I want you to act like one. You take care of Mama and Little Arliss. You look after the work and don't wait around for your mama to point out what needs to be done. Think you can do that?

I guessed that when you are nearly a man, you have to learn to put up with a lot of aggravation from little old bitty kids.

When it came to gunfire Jumper didn't have any more sense than a red ant in a hot skillet.

I'd heard fiddle music, but I'd never known it could stab you like a thorn and make you like the sting of it. I'd never heard none that made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. Or made you see the sun coming up out of a big pool of water, while the frogs hollered from the wild onions growing along the banks and the speckled bass popped their tails in the shoal water and the mockingbirds sat in the tops of the cedars and sang like they do at daybreak.

Then at night, we could hardly sleep. This

pool herd" of their little separate bunches of steers and trailed them to the new cattle market at Abilene, Kansas.

Well, plague take it, Aaron," he said to Papa, "you can't find a woman that'll put up with what a hound will. You take a dog like one of them yonder. You can starve them half to death. You can run him till his feet's wore off to the bloody bones. You can git on a high lonesome drunk and kick him all over the place. But he's still your dog. Ready to lick your hand or warm your feet on a cold night. Now, show me a woman that'll do the same.

It had to be a lot more fun when you had your own dog on a varmint hunt and could listen for his tree-bark off out yonder in the dark woods of a night and could say to the rest: "That's that old Snuffy dog of mine. Guess he's put another'n up a tree!