Craig Johnson Quotes & Sayings

I think insanity runs in the family. Hell, it practically gallops. — Craig Johnson

If no one remembered them, were they ever really here? — Craig Johnson

Rarely do you get those glimmers of unadulterated love and, if you're smart, you pack them away for darker days. — Craig Johnson

It was my father who taught me to talk to animals.He said they understand a hell of a lot more than we think they do. I remember him speaking to the horses he shod in a low and reassuring voice, explaining what he was doing to them; he said it was one of the things we owed them for their absolute, unreserved, unswerving loyalty. He said the outside of a horse is always good for the inside of a man. — Craig Johnson

I leaned forward with my elbows on my knees and her book in my hands. Like a lot of things in my life, I'd just about worn it out, but it was worn out with love, and that's the best kind of worn-out there is. Maybe we're like all those used cars, broken hand tools, articles of old clothing, scratched record albums, and dog-eared books. Maybe there really isn't any such thing as mortality; that life simply wears us out with love. — Craig Johnson

It was a two-gallon Styrofoam cooler - one of the cheap ones that you can pick up at any service station in the summer season and then listen to it squeak to the point of homicidal dementia. — Craig Johnson

Revolution is the industry of young men. — Craig Johnson

Aristotle said that some minds are not vases to be filled, but fires to be lit. — Craig Johnson

Last word from her was that Paris, half of Omar's money, and none of him was suiting her just fine." She — Craig Johnson

Cahoots being a legal term in Wyoming, see cahooting in the first degree, intent to cahoot, and so on. — Craig Johnson

It was the second time that day that I stood looking at a space where a large thing wasn't where it was supposed to be. — Craig Johnson

The old cowboy Hershel, "You know what they say about a horse bein' only afraid of two things?"
Walt, "What's that?"
Hershel, "Things that move and things that don't — Craig Johnson

taking them to Hardin for — Craig Johnson

It's only pre-marital sex if you plan on getting married. — Craig Johnson

know where he is. — Craig Johnson

Her fingers were cool, and her palms were strangely devoid of any lines, as if her life was yet to be determined. — Craig Johnson

I was brought up on a ranch but, because of my father, the romance of guns had somehow escaped me. In his eyes, a gun was a tool, not some half-assed deity. Guys who named their guns worried him and me. I — Craig Johnson

Everybody in this county knows your flavor, Walt Longmire. — Craig Johnson

His face remained immobile as he shut the door and walked back against the traffic. "No, they are not." Dog immediately jumped into the — Craig Johnson

I couldn't help but remember the one at my parents' place after they had passed. I'd gone through their things and hadn't kept much, but when it came time for the auction I'd had a strong impulse to bid on everything like some museum curator attempting to keep the collection whole. — Craig Johnson

Stay calm. Be brave. Watch for signs. — Craig Johnson

It all came down to judging - if you were a good judge of the man in front of you, you might survive; if not, then you were the honored dead. — Craig Johnson

there was something — Craig Johnson

Our society, our culture, and our humanity depend on never crossing certain lines, — Craig Johnson

Philadelphia, where no good deed goes unpunished . . . - STEVE LOPEZ The Philadelphia Inquirer January 15, 1995 — Craig Johnson

nature hates a vacuum and strange things are drawn into empty places; sometimes oddities survive where nothing else can. — Craig Johnson

I thought about Maggie and how passion was a difficult thing to sustain, but that friendship had a pace that could go on forever. — Craig Johnson

I've always been taught that religion is supposed to be a comfort to people, not a threat. I think these people have perverted something that's supposed to be holy and turned it into a weapon. — Craig Johnson

She resembled Anna Karenina, the kind of woman that if you want to kill, you have to hit with a train. — Craig Johnson

In my limited experience, women dreaded male statements that ended with "then you've got another think coming." It usually meant there was a lot more coming, but in this case there wasn't. — Craig Johnson

Don't you think scars make better stories than tattoos? — Craig Johnson

I saw me every day, and I wasn't so sure I was that fond of my company. — Craig Johnson

Like some strange little religion all its own, the one thing that makes the whole system work is the one thing that it robs you of - faith. — Craig Johnson

Henry had bought a Phillies hat as we'd gotten off the subway at Broad and had tucked his substantial ponytail over the adjustable strap in the back. He could have been from Philadelphia; he could have been a very large Indian from Philadelphia, but he could have been from Philadelphia. I was blending in even better. I had left my hat at the hospital on Lena Moretti's head, had purchased a natty fitted cap and a vast red-satin jacket from the Broad Street vendo, and now approached the major league ballpark looking like a British phone box. — Craig Johnson

Writing is a solitary pursuit and I think you have to be partially at peace with yourself, but it's the other part that's usually producing the stuff worth reading. — Craig Johnson

He mulled that over. "Sheriff Connally woulda let us shoot 'em."
I reached over and took his coffee away from him. "Yep. Lucian probably would have done the job himself, but we're living in more enlightened times." I drained his cup and handed it back with a smile. "Ain't it grand? — Craig Johnson

Stay calm, have courage, and watch for signs. — Craig Johnson

This is how it ends with everyone. You fall - you don't get back up. — Craig Johnson

For sixty-one days." I began questioning the makeup of the negotiation team I'd brought with me to convince the chief of the Northern Cheyenne tribe that he should allow my daughter to be married at Crazy Head Springs. "Don't call the White Buffalo a joint; it's the nerve center of the reservation." My undersheriff, Victoria Moretti, — Craig Johnson

stood at the door zipping, buttoning, fastening; it's what people in Wyoming do before they go outside in late December. — Craig Johnson

If someone is starving, excessively exercising or using purging behaviors, then we know they are in a high-risk place for turning on the psychiatric illnesses, — Craig Johnson

Sometimes I get to where I feel like I'm the only one getting it in the shorts in this life, you know? — Craig Johnson

He had his mother's looks, his father's temper, and nobody's brains. — Craig Johnson

Look . . ." I dreaded female statements that started with "look." In my limited experience, there was nowhere to hide after they were made. — Craig Johnson

If there's a character type I despise, it's the all-capable, all-knowing, physically perfect protagonist. My idea of hell would be to be trapped in a four-hundred page, first-person, first-tense, running monologue with a character like that. I think writers who produce characters along those lines should graduate from high school and move on. — Craig Johnson

I hung up, figuring that if this was the last three minutes of my life, I didn't want to spend them extraordinarily annoyed. — Craig Johnson

There were clouds at the mountains, and the snow pack reflected the sour-lemon sun into one of the most beautiful and perverse sunsets I had ever seen. The clouds were dappled like the hindquarters of an Appaloosa colt, and the beauty kicked just as hard. — Craig Johnson

Snowflakes make when they land on water, like the wail of a coyote; the sound reaches a climax and then fades away, all in about one — Craig Johnson

I think there was an awful lot about him that I thought I knew, but the truth was I was just coloring in the missing parts with colors I liked. — Craig Johnson

With more than thirty thousand suicides a year, the act is the tenth leading cause of death in the United States. — Craig Johnson

I thought about how we tilled and cultivated the land, planted trees on it, fenced it, built houses on it, and did everything we could to hold off the eternity of distance - anything to give the landscape some sort of human scale. No matter what we did to try and form the West, however, the West inevitably formed us instead. — Craig Johnson

The Reading Terminal Market on 12th and Arch was created in 1892 when the Reading Railroad opened markets below the elevated tracks of the new train shed. It had consistently housed an undetermined amount of aromas since then by creating a gastronomic bazaar conveniently located at street level. — Craig Johnson

Everything to do with women is foolish and, therefore, absolutely essential. — Craig Johnson

I'd say the depths of his stupidity have yet to be plumbed, and yours is comin' up fast on the inside turn. — Craig Johnson

Nobody makes an emotional bulletproof vest, so you just have to carry the shrapnel around with you. — Craig Johnson

Contrary to popular belief, there aren't that many descriptions of hell in the Bible, and the majority of images most people carry around in their heads are from the fourteenth-century poem, which means that our contemporary view of hell is actually from the Middle Ages. — Craig Johnson

Some of us are not meant to cowboy-up — Craig Johnson

Your father is why you don't allow guns in the house?" "I just don't like them. It seems to me that no matter what they always lead to bad things. My opinion is that produced for their specific purpose, they are inherently bad." We stared at each other for a moment, then she continued, "I know that they are a necessary evil in your line of work, but I don't allow necessary evils in my home. — Craig Johnson

Where the label had peeled — Craig Johnson

The smooth, steady movement of my actions raised a sliver of panic in the rational man who was abandoning me. — Craig Johnson

As your trusted Indian scout, it is important for me to warn you that you are now on perilously thin ice — Craig Johnson

I was exercising by doing twelve-ounce curls in an attempt to balance my electrolytes. — Craig Johnson

Interested, just for — Craig Johnson

Sidewinder. I didn't even bother pretending — Craig Johnson

I sometimes forgot about how spiritual Henry was. I had been raised as a Methodist where the highest sacrament was the bake sale. — Craig Johnson

Little known fact: offensive tackles score higher on the Wonderlic than any other position. — Craig Johnson

Hey, I try and have an open container with me no matter what state I'm in." She — Craig Johnson

She was classic Wyoming, that indiscriminate age between thirty and a hundred where the women find a comfort for themselves and just settle in. — Craig Johnson

eyes were grim. We both knew the — Craig Johnson

Some fires can't bear to dampen and can provide heat even from the distance of time. As — Craig Johnson

Interesting office management skills, kind of a 'violence is not the answer so I'm going to beat the shit out of you philosophy. — Craig Johnson

Comforting to know that we're the species that feels the most pain. — Craig Johnson

I flattered myself by thinking that, if faced with such a circumstance, I would respond within the letter of the law; but passion is a strange thing, a thing that warps and twists everything with which it comes in contact. — Craig Johnson

I sometimes think that it's not our enemies that we resent in life, but rather friends we have who stood quietly by and did nothing. — Craig Johnson

Slogans about smoking: Cigarettes are killers that travel in packs. — Craig Johnson

Do what you're trained to do and you might get out of this alive. Make the right decisions as if your life depended on them, because it does. Hesitate and you hesitate forever. — Craig Johnson

it wasn't that we had been so brave or bold, but that we'd simply traded one fear for another - afraid of what we were about to do for the fear of what we might not. "How — Craig Johnson

Oh heart! Oh blood that freezes, blood that burns! Earth's returns For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin! Shut them in, With their triumphs and their glories and the rest! Love is best. "Love Among the Ruins," Robert Browning, 1885 — Craig Johnson

The Moretti women had a smile like they were going to eat you ... and you'd like it. — Craig Johnson

There's any funny — Craig Johnson

Few people knew the shadowy history of the Special Operations Group that had operated out of Laos, but the numbers said it all: For every American Special Forces soldier that was lost, the North Vietnamese lost between 100 and 150 troops. The Bear had been a part of one of the most effective killing machines on either side of the war. — Craig Johnson

There are only three major vote getting days in Absoroka County, and I can't remember the other two. "Oh God, no. It's Pancake Day." I thought about shooting myself. I could see the headlines: Sheriff shoots self, unable to face pancakes. — Craig Johnson

the Autumn Count and — Craig Johnson

Maybe there really isn't any such thing as mortality; life simply wears us out with love. — Craig Johnson

Small chains wound their way through the trigger guards with little bronze locks at the end of each row. It was like a chain gang for weapons. Some of them might be good, some of them might be bad, but there was no way to tell until somebody picked them up. — Craig Johnson

We've never done a coordinated music effort. Everything else we've done has been around a holiday - Halloween, Mardi Gras, half way to Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day. — Craig Johnson

A butte is taller than it is wide, whereas a mesa, like this one, is wider than it is tall. — Craig Johnson

Out the back window. And get — Craig Johnson

Don't care how big they are, boys; they can't do anything if you get 'em up off the ground. — Craig Johnson

I've done some crazy things in my life, but asking women their age isn't one of them. — Craig Johnson

I don't know what the exact physical dynamics are that cause a shower curtain to attach itself to your body when you turn on the water but, since my shower was surrounded on all sides by curtains, I turned on the water and became a vinyl, vacuum-sealed sheriff burrito. — Craig Johnson

Maybe he was what Lucian would have turned out to be if the old sheriff hadn't have lived in such interesting times. A couple of years in a Japanese prison camp might be just what Turk needed. But I didn't have a bridge over the river Kwai for him to build so we had to settle for Powder Junction. — Craig Johnson

Seeing her again was like unearthing an emotional library card with a lot of overdues. — Craig Johnson

Walt Longmire: I punched him in the fist with my nose, but I think he'll live. — Craig Johnson

It's never about who's the fastest, strongest, toughest - it's always about who, when everyone else would pause, will commit. — Craig Johnson

It was strange the paths the human heart chose to take and the attachments it made along the way. The surest sign of the altruistic nature of the organ is its ability to ignore race, color, creed, and gender and just blindly love with all its might - one of the most irrefutable forces on earth. They — Craig Johnson

All the important promises are about leaving or not leaving. — Craig Johnson

Bubba the Sheep Squeezer in — Craig Johnson

because I wanted to — Craig Johnson

I keep it in there as a reminder and to keep temptation at hand. Temptation out of reach does you no good. — Craig Johnson