Norwood Quotes

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

“Don't let your mouth write a check that your ass can't cash, son.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“Do they pay you by the hour or what? Norwood said to the monocled peanut face.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“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, Norwood

“Watch it now. You’re taking liberties. Don’t make things any worse than they are. Don’t let your mouth write a check that your ass can’t cash, son.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“Mrs. Whichcoat came in the back door with an empty wire basket. She hung it up in the pantry and took off her brown garden gloves. “All the hens have stopped laying,” she said. “I didn’t get one egg.” There was a note of despair in her voice but no surprise. It was as though she had warned all along that there would be treachery one day in the hen house.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“I like chickens,” said Norwood. “You can go in a chicken house at night and they’re all sitting there on them poles facing the front like they was riding an elevator.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“Yes, but that was the way she wanted to do it. And furthermore she didn’t want him going out there with her now. Three exclamation marks appeared over Norwood’s head. No, her mind was made up.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“I wonder if you really love me. Do you?” “Yeah.” “Do you think you can say it?” “I will sometime. Not on the bus.” “You don’t mind saying it in a song, why can’t you say it talking?” “A song is different. You’re just singing a song there.” “It’s not hard for people who really mean it to say it.” “It is if somebody’s trying to make you say it. When somebody gets your arm around behind you and wants to make you say ‘calf rope,’ well, you don’t want to say it then.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“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.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“She also saw an interesting sight. On a curve not far from Little Rock a busload of Elks had turned over. The bus was on its right side in the ditch, the front wheels still slowly turning, and the Elks were surfacing one at a time through the escape hatch on the left side, now topside. One Elk was lying on the grass, maybe dead, no ball game for him, and others were limping and hopping about and holding their heads. Another one, in torn shirt-sleeves, was sitting on a suitcase on top of the bus. He was not lifting a finger to help but as each surviving brother Elk stuck his head up through the hatchway, he gave a long salute from his compressed-air horn. The big Trailways cruiser began to slow down. When the man saw this he turned with his noise device and hooted it -- there could be no mistake -- at the driver. Norwood was talking to a man with bulging eyes across the aisle who had gone broke in Mississippi selling premium beer for $3.95 a case on credit, and they both missed it, that hooting part. They did help load the injured into ambulances. The former tavern keeper found a silver dollar in the grass and kept it.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“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.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“This stuff is cheap but it’s very nutritious.” He picked up the can and read from it. “Listen to this: ‘beef tripe, beef hearts, beef, pork, salt, vinegar, flavoring, sugar and sodium nitrite.’ Do you know what tripe is?” “It’s the gut part.” “That’s what I thought. I suspected it was something like that.” “It’s all meat. Meat is meat. Have you ever eat any squirrel brains?” “No, how are they?” “About like calf brains. They’re not bad if you don’t think about it. The bad part is cracking them little skulls open. One thing I won’t eat is hog’s head cheese. My sister Vernell, you can turn her loose with a spoon and she’ll eat a pound of it before she gets up. Some people call it souse.” “Why do they call it that?” “I don’t know. You got to have a name for everything.” “Yes, I hadn’t thought of that. Well, they’re both good names. Tripe. Souse.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood

“Grady brought out a bottle of Old Forester from under the seat.”
― Charles Portis, Norwood