Charles Portis Quotes

27 quotes in 515 categories

• 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…
• 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,…
• 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,…
• 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…
• 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…
• Listen, here's what I'd like to do: I'd like to live in a trailer and play records all night.
• My Master of Arts degree means nothing at all to these monkeys and I have come to share their indifference.
• 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…
• Lookin' back is a bad habit.
• 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…
• I would not put a thief in my mouth to steal my brains.
• 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?
• There is no knowing what is in a man's heart.
• 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…
• 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.
• If you want anything done right you will have to see to it yourself every time.
• The wicked flee when none pursueth.
• 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…
• 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…
• Nothing I like to do pays well.

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