Quotes from Charles Portis

You should of got a medal." "You don't get medals for things like that. Unless you're a officer. They give 'em to each other.

He took Ed for a Southerner and tried to stay clear of him.

did you often stagger into the middle of busy intersections with your gummy eyes and make comical, drunken attempts to direct traffic?

After lunch they looked through some stuff in the garage and found a long narrow cage suitable for Joann to travel in. It had once served as a humane catch-'em-alive mink trap, and in fact no mink had ever entered it, such was its humanity.

He knew nothing about Texas trailer law but he suspected that there was no really effective way of removing a person from a trailer in the Rio Grande Valley without the use of firearms or tear gas.

Well, it was right in there where I lost him. That traffic circle is where he tore his britches. I never saw him after that. He has no chin, you know." "You told me that." "Captain Hughes of the Rangers used to say that if they ever hanged old Ski they would have to put the rope under his nose.

You'll have to get your own lawyer, Dupree." "Where am I supposed to get him? I've called every son of a bitch in the yellow pages." A good lawyer, he thought, would be able to forestall the psychiatric examination at the prison hospital in Springfield, Missouri. That examination was what he feared most, and with good reason, even though the finding would no doubt have provided a solid defense.

Webster Spooner carried my bag upstairs and showed me to my room. He said he would keep an eye on the car. I didn't see how he was going to do that from his box. I knew he was a sound sleeper. The woman Ruth had almost had to kill him to get him awake.

The big problem was the typing. When you run up against a policeman at a typewriter, you might as well get a Coke and relax.

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.

Nothing I like to do pays well.

Lookin' back is a bad habit.

But I had not the strength nor the inclination to bandy words with a drunkard. What have you done when you have bested a fool?

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

Time just gets away from us.

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

There is no knowing what is in a man's heart.

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

The wicked flee when none pursueth.

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.

MR.GOUDY: I believe you testified that you backed away from Aaron Wharton. MR.COGBURN: That is right. MR.GOUDY: You were backing away? MR.COGBURN: Yes sir. He had that ax raised. MR.GOUDY: Which direction were you going? MR.COGBURN: I always go backwards when I am backing up.

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.

What have you done when you have bested a fool?