C.J. Box > Quotes

“In Joe’s experience, the person who talked the most very often had the least to say.”
― C.J. Box

“Nothing spells trouble like two drunk cowboys with a rocket launcher.”
― C.J. Box, Cold Wind

“On the third day of their honeymoon, infamous environmental activist Stewie Woods and his new bride, Annabel Bellotti, were spiking trees in the forest when a cow exploded and blew them up. Until then, their marriage had been happy.”
― C.J. Box, Savage Run

“Children were not pets, not furniture, not items put on earth to bring pleasure to people who owned them, she raged to herself.”
― C.J. Box, Winterkill

“there is no sound in nature that makes men move along faster than the pumping of a shotgun. Except maybe a chainsaw”
― C.J. Box, Below Zero

“AS A HUNTER I am looked down upon in Western society. I am portrayed as a brute. I am denigrated and spat upon, and thought of as a slow-witted anachronism, the dregs of a discredited culture. This happened quickly when one looks at human history. The skills I possess—the ability to track, hunt, kill, and dress out my prey so it can be served at a table to feed others—were prized for tens of thousands of years. Hunters fed those in the tribe and family who could not hunt well or did not hunt because they weren’t physically able to. The success of the hunter produced not only healthy food and clothing, tools, medicine, and amenities, but a direct hot-blooded connection with God and the natural world. The hunter was the provider, and exalted as such.”
― C.J. Box, Blood Trail

“Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world’s first national park—a set-aside of 2. 2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife—so no man or corporation could ever own it.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“A Wyoming vegetarian is someone who only eats meat once a day.”
― C.J. Box, Wolf Pack

“Like most men, he had a tough time believing that his wife had had any kind of interesting life before she met him. Which was ridiculous on its face.”
― C.J. Box, Savage Run

“Wyomingites, Joe had observed, didn’t know what to do when it rained except get out of it, watch it through the window, and wait for it to go away.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“We’re trivial pissants in the big scheme of things, fleas, fly shit in the pepper.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“The relationship between a father and his daughters, Joe had discovered, was a remarkably powerful thing. They looked to him to accomplish greatness; they expected it as a matter of course because he was their dad and therefore a great man.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“Joe had always considered individual words as finite units of currency, and he believed in savings.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“I've come to realize something that for three weeks in my life I'd begun to doubt: There are good people in the world. Good people, kind people. xxx They all could have chosen to be cold, cruel, indifferent. That would have been easy. Brutality, I think, comes naturally to human beings. But they chose to be good, even if what they did could be questioned within the strict confines of the law.”
― C.J. Box, Three Weeks To Say Goodbye

“We are both disciples of the Louis Jordan song ‘What’s the Use of Getting Sober (When You’re Gonna Get Drunk Again).”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“I often think that in the world we live in today, where we are threatened by forces as violent and primitive as anything we have ever faced, that it would be wise to look back a little ourselves and embrace our heritage. We were once a nation of hunters. And not the effete, European-style hunters who did it for sport. We hunted for our food, our independence. It’s what made us who we are. But, like so many other virtues that made us unique, we have, as a society, forgotten where we came from and how we got here. What was once both noble and essential has become perverted and indefensible.”
― C.J. Box, Blood Trail

“Jim Harrison’s novels, John McPhee’s nonfiction, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker. His books”
― C.J. Box, Back Of Beyond

“In Wyoming, the people owned the game animals, and they took their ownership to heart.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“Do you think that the day you stop listening to new music is the day you decide you’re on the path to old age? Like you’ve given up on new stuff and you resign yourself to music you’ve already heard? Like you’re through discovering and all you want to do is rummage through your old things?”
― C.J. Box, Below Zero

“We’re bringing good little people into the world who have a mom and a dad who care about them and love them. They know right from wrong because their parents teach them which is which, and because their parents live by example. Somewhere, there is a reward for us, Joe. We need to believe that. We won’t just be abandoned.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“Pronghorn antelope were the second fastest mammals on earth—only an African cheetah could outrun them.”
― C.J. Box, Open Season

“the Eight Percent Rule to McCann. “It’s really very simple,” he said, using the same melodic voice he used to pet and stroke the jury. “I have to convince one juror out of twelve to vote with us. One of twelve is eight percent, give or take. Not that I need to convince him our client is innocent, understand. I just need to establish an intimate partnership with that one fellow or lady in a crowd who is contrary. The man or woman who has an ax to grind. My theory, and you saw it happen twice, is that in any group of people forced to be together, at least eight percent of them will go against the majority if for no other reason than to shove it up their ass—if they have an authority figure they can trust to be on their side. I am that leader in the courtroom.”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“The headless trunk was discovered impaled on a metal fencepost on the edge of the town park.”
― C.J. Box, Badlands

“Yellowstone was established as the first national park in the world in 1872 by an act of Congress. The boundaries were drawn before Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana were granted statehood,”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire

“There aren't four seasons in Rocky Mountains, but three: summer, winter, and mud.”
― C.J. Box, Wolf Pack

“River cottonwoods were so drunk with color the leaves hurt his eyes.”
― C.J. Box, Force of Nature

“Twilight in the mountains brought a special kind of cold. It crept out from the darkness of the lodgepole pine forest where it had spent the daylight hours and it slithered across the top of the snow to sting every inch of exposed human skin. Sounds became sharper and the snow itself became a different texture that squeaked like nails on a chalkboard with every footfall.”
― C.J. Box, The Disappeared

“FEDERAL LANDOWNERSHIP (TOP 12 STATES) STATE TOTAL SQUARE MILES % OWNED BY FEDERAL GOV. 1. Nevada 61,548 87.6 2. Utah 35,723 68 3. Alaska 244,627 67 4. Idaho 34,520 65.2 5. Oregon 34,084 55.5 6. California 49,842 49.9 7. Wyoming 30,902 49.7 8. Arizona 32,228 44.3 9. Colorado 25,851 38.9 10. New Mexico 28,143 36.2 11. Washington 13,984 32.8 12. Montana 29,718 31.9 Source: National Wilderness Institute”
― C.J. Box, Breaking Point

“He doubted that the drivers hurtling down the interstate even noticed the herd, the coyote, or the dogfight in the clouds. Like so many vistas in the state, Joe thought, it looked like a whole lot of nothing at first. But if one stopped and observed, really sat still for a few minutes and observed, there was a lot going on. The high-steppe desert was alive and complex. •”
― C.J. Box, Off the Grid

“Because it’s indicative of a tired mind-set. It’s nothing more than mental jerking off: puffed-up officials trying to make order out of random acts when all around them their world is about to explode—but they just don’t know it, or care. It’s like trying to find the fly shit in the pepper. I mean, who cares?”
― C.J. Box, Free Fire