The Red Pony Quotes

“As he went back toward the house, Jody knew one thing more sharply than he had ever known anything. He must never tell anyone about the rapier. It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was a truth that might be shattered by division.”

“A longing caressed him, and it was so sharp that he wanted to cry to get it out of his breast. He lay down in the green grass near the round tub at the brush line. He covered his eyes with his crossed arms and lay there a long time, and he was full of a nameless sorrow.”

“Then he saw what he was looking for. Below, in one of the little clearings in the brush lay the red pony.”

“Carl Tiflin came to the barn with Jody one day. He looked admiringly at the groomed bay coat, and he felt the firm flesh over ribs and shoulders. ‘You’ve done a good job,’ he said to Jody. And this was the greatest praise he knew how to give. Jody was bright with pride for hours afterward.”

“He felt an uncertainty in the air, a feeling of change and of loss and of the gain of new and unfamiliar things.”

“The bird looked much smaller dead than it had alive. Jody felt a little mean pain in his stomach, so he took out his pocketknife and cut off the bird’s head.”

“Billy Buck sat down on the steps, because he was a cow-hand, and it wouldn’t be fitting that he should go first into the dining room.”

“Jody couldn’t have gone away if he wanted to. It was awful to see the red hide cut, but infinitely more terrible to know it being cut and not see it. ‘I’ll stay right here,’ he said bitterly.”

“Jody did not ask where his father and Billy Buck were riding that day, but he wished he might go along. His father was a disciplinarian. Jody obeyed him in everything without questions of any kind.”

“Billy knew he had been infallible before that, and now he was capable of failure. ”