Fred Gipson Quotes

“After that, I couldn’t do enough for Old Yeller.”

“He made me so mad at first that I wanted to kill him. Then, later, when I had to kill him, it was like having to shoot some of my own folks. That’s how much I’d come to think of the big yeller dog.”

“It was the first time I’d ever shaken hands like a man. It made me feel big and solemn and important in a way I’d never felt before.”

“I don’t guess it’s a thing you ought to forget. What I mean is, things like that happen. They may seem mighty cruel and unfair, but that’s how life is part of the time. But that isn’t the only way life is. A part of the time, it’s mighty good. And a man can’t afford to waste all the good part, worrying about the bad parts. That makes it all bad.”

“There’s no hope for him now, Travis. He’s suffering. You know we’ve got to do it.”

“There was no question about it: for the sort of country we lived in, a good dog around the place was sometimes worth more than two or three men.”

“I was just numb all over, like a dead man walking.”

“I’ll wear you to a frazzle.”

“But he was my dog. I’ll do it.”

“He’s part Old Yeller,” she said. “And he was the best one of the bunch.”

“We called him Old Yeller. The name had a sort of double meaning. One part meant that his short hair was a dingy yellow, a color that we called “yeller” in those days. The other meant that when he opened his head, the sound he let out came closer to being a yell than a bark.”