58 Quotes by Wilson Rawls

When I saw my little sister kneeling in the center of that snow-white circle, and that old crutch laying on the ground beside her, I forgot about ponies and .22s. I wanted my little sister to get that old leg of hers fixed up. I wanted that more than anything I had ever wanted in my life. That was going to be my wish. Once.

Everything was going along just fine until Mama caught me cutting out of the circles of tin with her scissors. I always swore she could find the biggest switches of any woman in the Ozarks.

Where the Red Fern Grows taps into the wellspring that runs deep in all of us as we fall in step with a boy and his dogs and, piece by piece, our own stories unfold.

DAY, I HAD no idea what was in store for me. To begin with, everything was too perfect for anything unusual to happen. It was one of those days when a man feels good, feels like speaking to his neighbor, is glad to live in a country like ours, and proud of his government. You know what I mean, one of those rare days when.

Begrudgingly, they.

A man’s children should have an education. They should get out and see the world and meet people.

I couldn’t understand these town people. If they weren’t staring at a fellow, they were laughing at him.

I’m sure some great champions had slid out of that pipe, and no doubt more than one world record had been broken, but if someone had been there when I came out, I know the record I set would stand today in all its glory.

Our home was in a beautiful valley far back in the rugged Ozarks. The country was new and sparsely settled. The land we lived on was Cherokee land, allotted to my mother because of the Cherokee blood that flowed in her veins. It lay in a strip from the foothills of the mountains to the banks of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma.