CHARLES PORTIS

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

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.

We must each of us bear our own misfortunes.

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?

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.

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.

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 say all cats are wicked, though often useful. Who has not seen Satan in their sly faces?

Time just gets away from us.

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

I always go backwards when I am backing up.

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.

What have you done when you have bested a fool?

The wicked flee when none pursueth.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nothing I like to do pays well.

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

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

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.

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