Charles Portis Quotes & Sayings

Lookin' back is a bad habit. — Charles Portis

Mexican homes as a rule are closed off to the world by high blank walls of yellowish masonry, topped with broken glass to discourage escaladores, or climbing burglars. The gardens and fountains and other delights are hidden, as in an Arab city. — Charles Portis

I had hated these ponies for the part they played in my father's death but now I realized the notion was fanciful, that it was wrong to charge blame to these pretty beasts who knew neither good nor evil but only innocence. I say that of these ponies. 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? Some preachers will say, well, that is superstitious "claptrap." My answer is this: Preacher, go to your Bible and read Luke 8: 26-33 — Charles Portis

You put things off and then one morning you wake up and say - today I will change the oil in my truck. — Charles Portis

She said, 'Goodbye, Reuben, a love for decency does not abide in you.' There is your divorced woman talking about decency. I told her, I said, 'Goodbye, Nola, I hope that little nail selling bastard will make you happy this time. — Charles Portis

At your tongue every few minutes." "I will not slow you down. I am a good enough rider." "I will not be stopping at boardinghouses with warm beds and plates of hot grub on the table. It will be traveling fast and eating light. What little sleeping is done will take place on the ground." "I have slept out at night. Papa took me and Little Frank coon hunting last summer on the Petit Jean." "Coon hunting?" "We were out in the woods all night. We sat around a big fire and Yarnell told ghost stories. We had a good time." "Blast coon hunting! This ain't no coon hunt, it don't come in forty miles of being a coon hunt!" "It is the same idea as a coon hunt. You are just trying to make your — Charles Portis

With that, Quincy brought the bowie knife down on Moon's cuffed hand and chopped off four fingers which flew up before my eyes like chips from a log. Moon screamed and a rifle ball shattered the lantern in front of me and struck Quincy in the neck, causing hot blood to spurt on my face. My thought was: I am better out of this. — Charles Portis

wind came up through the floor hole in such a way that the Heath wrappers were suspended behind my head in a noisy brown vortex — Charles Portis

Babcock knew no Southerners personally but he had seen them in court often enough ... and Ed's manner and appearance said Dixie to him. He imagined Ed at home with his family, a big one, from old geezers to toddlers. He saw them eating their yams and pralines and playing their fiddles and dancing their jigs and guffawing over coarse jokes and beating one another to death with agricultural implements. — Charles Portis

Time just gets away from us. — Charles Portis

The People's' historic duty was to become a nameless herd and submit to the absolute control of a small pack of wily and vicious intellectuals. — Charles Portis

The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner. — Charles Portis

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

That is the way of it. - Rooster Cogburn — Charles Portis

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. — Charles Portis

Fill your hand, you son of a bitch! — Charles Portis

There is nothing free except the Grace of God. — Charles Portis

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

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? — Charles Portis

Lucille Biggers Langford and Florence Mabry Whiteside. As the — Charles Portis

If I had received good instruction as a child I would be with my family today and at peace with my neighbors. I hope and pray that all you parents in the sound of my voice will train up your children in the way they should go. — Charles Portis

I didn't care for beat reporting, covering the same thing day after day - short attention span. — Charles Portis

They later moved to a tin-roof house that was situated in a gas field under a spectacular flare that burned all the time. Big copper-green beetles the size of mice came from all over the Southland to see it and die in it. At night their corpses pankled down on the tin roof. — Charles Portis

In the Anthropology Club, as I understood it, you were permitted, if not required, to despise only one thing, and that was your own culture, that of the West. — Charles Portis

That's bold talk for a one-eyed fat man. — Charles Portis

As for his height, I would put it at no more than five feet nine inches - he being fully erect, out of his monkey crouch - and yet he brazenly put down five feet eleven on all forms and applications ... He wore glasses, the lenses thick and greasy, which distorted the things of the world into unnatural shapes. I myself have never needed glasses. I can read roadsigns a halfmile away and I can see individual stars and planets to the seventh magnitude with no optical aids whatever. I can see Uranus. — Charles Portis

I confess [Election] is a hard doctrine, running contrary to our earthly ideas of fair play, but I can see no way around it. Read I Corinthians 6:13 and II Timothy 1:9,10. Also I Peter 1:2,19,20 and Romans 11:7. There you have it. It was good for Paul and Silas and it is good enough for me. It is good enough for you too. — Charles Portis

I said, 'I don't like the way you look.'
Quincy stopped his work. He said, 'Are you talking to me, runt?'
I said, 'Yes, and I will say it again. I don't like the way you look and I don't like the way you are cutting up that turkey. I hope you go to jail. My lawyer will not help you. — Charles Portis

I noticed that the houses in Fort Smith were numbered but it was no city at all compared to Little Rock. I thought then and still think that Fort Smith ought to be in Oklahoma instead of Arkansas ... — Charles Portis

I bought some crackers and a piece of hoop cheese and an apple at a grocery store and sat on a nail keg by the stove and had a cheap yet nourishing lunch. You know what they say, Enough is as good as a feast. — Charles Portis

I will go further and say all cats are wicked, though often useful — Charles Portis

Now I was surprised and light-headed, like a domestic fowl that finds itself able to fly over a low fence in a moment of terror. — Charles Portis

You can expect that out of Federal people and to make it worse this was a Republican gang that cared nothing for the opinion of the good people of Arkansas who are Democrats. — Charles Portis

The wicked flee when none pursueth. — Charles Portis

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. — Charles Portis

Who is the best marshal they have?'
The sheriff thought on it for a minute. He said, 'I would have to weigh that proposition. There is near about two hundred of them. I reckon William Waters is the best tracker. He is a half-breed Comanche and it is something to see, watching him cut for sign. The meanest one is Rooster Cogburn. He is a pitiless man, double-tough, and fear don't enter into his thinking. He loves to pull a cork. Now L.T. Quinn, he brings his prisoners in alive. He may let one get by now and then but he believes even the worst of men is entitled to a fair shake. Also the court does not pay any fees for dead men. Quinn is a good peace officer and a lay preacher to boot. He will not plant evidence or abuse a prisoner. He is straight as a string. Yes, I will say Quinn is about the best they have.'
I said, 'Where can I find this Rooster? — Charles Portis

My Master of Arts degree means nothing at all to these monkeys and I have come to share their indifference. — Charles Portis

Who all is in there? Speak up and be quick about it!' 'A Methodist and a son a bitch! — Charles Portis

I don't know what position you're talking about, sir. The Gnomon Society has never questioned the rotundity of the earth. Mr. Jimmerson is himself a skilled topographer."
"Excuse me, Mr. Popper, but I have it right here in Mr. Jimmerson's own words on page twenty-nine of 101 Gnomon Facts."
"No, sir. Excuse me but you don't. Please look again. Read that passage carefully and you'll see what we actually say is that the earth looks flat. We still say that. It's so flat around Brownsville as to be striking to the eye."
"But isn't that just a weasel way of saying that you really believe if to be flat?"
"Not at all. What we're saying is that the curvature of the earth is so gentle, relative to our human scale of things, that we need not bother or take it into account when going for a stroll, say, or laying out our gardens. — Charles Portis

watching him cut for sign. — Charles Portis

A reporter from 'The Times' wanted to arm-wrestle, and as I recall, he kept challenging me. So we went at it, and there was a pop. His arm broke. Very strange. He went into a kind of swoon. — Charles Portis

One time you smash a bug with no mercy. Another time you find one helpless on his back with his legs flailing the air, and you flip him over and let him go on his way. The struggle that touches the heart. — Charles Portis

When the beer came, I dipped a finger in it and wet down each corner of the paper napkin to anchor it, so it would not come up with the mug each time and make me appear ridiculous. I — Charles Portis

It was old President Diaz who said that nothing ever happens in Mexico until it happens. Things rock along from day to day, and then all at once you are caught up in a rush of unforeseen events. — Charles Portis

Listen, here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to live in a trailer and play records all night. — Charles Portis

As we rode along LaBoeuf commenced whistling tunes, perhaps to take his mind off his sore arm. Rooster said, "God damn a man that whistles!" It was the wrong thing to say if he wished it to stop. — Charles Portis

One of the favorite speakers was a man in red who warned of sickle-cell anemia, 'a deadly organism lurking in all nigger blood.'

'If so much as one drop of nigger blood gets in your baby's cereal,' he said, 'the baby will surely die in one year.' He did not explain how he thought a negro would come to bleed in anyone's cereal. — Charles Portis

She gave me a pledge card, a card promising an annual gift of $5, $10, or $25 toward the support of the Unity mission. I filled it out under the hot light of the projector. The name and address spaces were much too short, unless you wrote a very fine hand or unless your name was Ed Poe and you lived at 1 Elm St. — Charles Portis

I'm white and I don't dance, but that doesn't mean I have all the answers. — Charles Portis

He drank even as he rode, which looked difficult. I cannot say it slowed him down any, but it did make him silly. Why do people wish to be silly? — Charles Portis

Do they pay you by the hour or what? Norwood said to the monocled peanut face. — Charles Portis

You go for a man hard and fast enough and he don't have time to think about how many is with him, he thinks about himself and how he may get clear out of the wrath that is about to set down on him. — Charles Portis

You are a pearl of great price to me, but there are times when you are an almighty trial to those who love you. — Charles Portis

Nothing is too long or too short either if you have a true and interesting tale and what I call a "graphic" writing style combined with educational aims. — Charles Portis

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. — Charles Portis

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. — Charles Portis

Nothing I like to do pays well. — Charles Portis

On his deathbed he asked for a priest and became a Catholic. That was his wife's religion. It was his own business and none of mine. If you had sentenced one hundred and sixty men to death and seen around eighty of them swing, then maybe at the last minute you would feel the need for some stronger medicine than the Methodists could make. — Charles Portis

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes. — Charles Portis

Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell! — Charles Portis

Rooster said, "Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!" and he took the reins in his teeth and pulled the other saddle revolver and drove his spurs into the flanks of his strong horse Bo and charged directly at the bandits. It was a sight to see. He held the revolvers wide on either side of the head of his plunging steed. The four bandits accepted the challenge and they likewise pulled their arms and charged their ponies ahead. — Charles Portis

There is no generosity in women. They want everything coming in and nothing going out. They show no trust. Lord God, how they hate to pay you! They will get the work of two men out of you and I guess they would beat you with whips if they were able to. No sir, not me. Never. A man will not work for a woman, not unless he has clabber for brains. — Charles Portis

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? — Charles Portis

The kind of people I know now don't have barbecues, Mama. They stand up alone at nights in small rooms and eat cold weenies. My so-called friends are bums. Many of them are nothing but rats. They spread T.B. and use dirty language. They're wife-beaters and window peepers and night crawlers and dope fiends. They have running sores on the backs of their hands that never heal. They peer up from cracks in the floor with their small red eyes and wait for chances. — Charles Portis

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

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. — Charles Portis

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

I am ready. I have repented my sins and soon I will be in heaven with Christ my savior. Now I must die like a man. — Charles Portis