Hoot Quotes

“On one wall of Roy’s bedroom was a poster from the Livingston rodeo that showed a cowboy riding a ferocious humpbacked bull. The cowboy held one hand high in the air, and his hat was flying off his head. Every night before turning off the lights, Roy would lie on his pillow and stare at the poster, imagining that he was the sinewy young bull rider in the picture.”

“The boy was straw-blond and wiry, and his skin was nut-brown from the sun. The expression on his face was intent and serious. He wore a faded Miami Heat basketball jersey and dirty khaki shorts, and here was the odd part: no shoes. The soles of his bare feet looked as black as barbecue coals.”

“Of all the places the Eberhardts had lived, Roy’s favorite was Bozeman, Montana. The snaggle-peaked mountains, the braided green rivers, the sky so blue it seemed like a painting - Roy had never imagined anywhere so beautiful.”

″‘Ever since I was little,’ Mullet Fingers said, ‘I’ve been watchin’ this place disappear - the piney woods, the scrub, the creeks, the glades. Even the beaches, man - they put up all these giant hotels and only goober tourists are allowed. It really sucks.‘”

“Dana was a well-known idiot, on top of which he outweighed Roy by at least fifty pounds. Fighting back would have been a complete waste of energy.”

″‘It’s about those owls.’ ‘Sure.’ ‘What’s gonna happen to them?’ Officer Delinko asked. ‘Once you start bulldozing, I mean.’ Curly the foreman chuckled. He thought the policeman must be kidding. ‘What owls?’ he said.”

“I call him Mullet Fingers ’cause he can catch mullet with his bare hands. You know how hard that is?”

“In Montana, ospreys lived in the cottonwoods all along the big rivers, where they dived on trout and whitefish. Roy had been pleasantly surprised to find that Florida had ospreys, too. It was remarkable that the same species of bird was able to thrive in two places so far apart, and so completely different. If they can do it, Roy thought, maybe I can too.”

“There, standing by the hole and peering curiously at one of the meatballs, was the smallest owl that he had ever seen. Mullet Fingers chucked him gently on the shoulder. ‘Okay—now do you get it?’ ‘Yeah,’ said Roy. ‘I get it.‘”

″‘How would you and Mom like it,’ Roy pressed on, ‘if a bunch of strangers showed up one day with bulldozers to flatten this house? And all they had to say was ‘Don’t worry, Mr. and Mrs. Eberhardt, it’s no big deal. Just pack up and move to another place.’ How would you feel about that?‘”