Jeremiah Johnson quotes

View Quote Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Can you skin Griz, pilgrim?
Jeremiah Johnson: I can skin most anything.
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You sure are ****y for a starvin' pilgrim.
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Well there she be. Go inside get yourself warm, get yourself something to eat. I've got a chore to finish. Now boy, are you sure that you can skin Griz?
Jeremiah Johnson: I can skin'em as fast as you can catch'em.
[Bear Claw runs through the cabin with a huge Grizzly Bear close behind and jumps out the back window.]
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Skin that pilgrim, and I'll get you another!

View Quote Bear Claw Chris Lapp: You've come far pilgrim.
Jeremiah Johnson: Feels like far.
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Were it worth the trouble?
Jeremiah Johnson: What trouble?

View Quote Del Gue: Ain't that Hatchet Jack's rifle?
Jeremiah Johnson: Yep.
Del Gue: How did you get it?
Jeremiah Johnson: Found him froze to a tree.
Del Gue: Damn! Hatchet Jack was a wild one. He was livin' two years up in in a cave on the Musselshell with a female panther. She never did get used to him.

View Quote Del Gue: I ain't never seen 'em, but my common sense tells me the Andes is foothills, and the Alps is for children to climb! Keep good care of your hair! These here is God's finest scupturings! And there ain't no laws for the brave ones! And there ain't no asylums for the crazy ones! And there ain't no churches, except for this right here! And there ain't no priests excepting the birds. By God, I are a mountain man, and I'll live 'til an arrow or a bullet finds me. And then I'll leave my bones on this great map of the magnificent . . .

View Quote Del Gue: Jeremiah, maybe you best go down to a town, get outta these mountains.
Jeremiah Johnson: I've been to a town Del.

View Quote Del Gue: Which way you headed, Jeremiah?
Jeremiah Johnson: Canada, maybe. I hear there is land there a man has never seen.
Del Gue: Well, keep your nose in the wind, and your eyes along the skyline.
Jeremiah Johnson: I will do that, Del Gue.

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: Ain't that hair I see on your head, Del?
Del Gue: I figured that when I depart this life I'd like to leave something behind even if just to be remembered on some man's lodge pole.
Jeremiah Johnson: Sound wisdom.

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: Just where is it I could find bear, beaver, and other critters worth cash money when skinned?
Robidoux: Ride due west till the sun sets. Turn left at the Rocky Mountains.

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: Where you headed?
Del Gue: Same place you are, Jeremiah: hell, in the end.

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: Who are they?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Probably Crow. If'n they catch us, they'll steal our horses.
Jeremiah Johnson: Why?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: It's their territory, they figure we're tresspassin'.
[an arrow flies by Bear Claw's head and sticks in a tree]
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Yep, Crow. A fella by the name of Paints-His-Shirt-Red. That's his sign. Just stand still.
[Paints His Shirt Red approaches. Bear Claw pulls arrow from tree and hands it back]

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: Y'ever get lonesome?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Fer what?
Jeremiah Johnson: Woman?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Full time night woman? I never could find no tracks on a woman's heart. I packed me a squaw for ten year, Pilgrim. Cheyenne, she were, and the meanest bitch that ever balled for beads. I lodge-poled her at Deadwood Creek, and traded her for a Hawken gun. But don't get me wrong; I loves the womens, I surely do. But I swear, a woman's breast is the hardest rock that the Almighty ever made on this earth, and I can find no sign on it. Now these coals will simmer till sunrise. You best go do likewise.
[Hours later, Jeremiah stirred out of the sack almost afire]
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Didn't put enough dirt down. Saw it right off.

View Quote Jeremiah Johnson: You will do well, Del. You will do well, if you don't get in too much trouble with all that hair.
Del Gue: Ain't this somethin'? I told my pap and mam I was coming to the mountains to trap and be a mountain man. Acted like they was gut-shot. Says, "son, make your life go here. Here's where the peoples is. Them mountains is for animals and savages." I said, "Mother Gue, the Rocky Mountains is the marrow of the world." And by God I was right.

View Quote [Bear Claw and Jeremiah Johnson meet again after not seeing each other for a long time.]
Bear Claw: What's on the spit?
Jeremiah Johnson: Grown particular?
Bear Claw: Not about feedin' just the company I keep. [Jeremiah tosses him a rabbits leg] Thank you, kindly.
Bear Claw: You've come far, pilgrim.
Jeremiah Johnson: Feels like far.
Bear Claw: Were it worth the trouble?
Jeremiah Johnson: [painfully] Ah, what trouble?
Bear Claw: You cook good rabbit pilgrim. Cold up here.
Jeremiah Johnson: What brings you up so high?
Bear Claw: Grizz!
Jeremiah Johnson: Uh, Grizz.
Bear Claw: Avalanche took the cabin, lost my mule. We swum out of it. No matter, there weren't no Grizz left anyway.
Jeremiah Johnson: You wouldn't happen to know what month of the year it is?
Bear Claw: Why no, I truly wouldn't. I'm sorry, pilgrim. Winter's a long time going?
Jeremiah Johnson: [exhausted] Ah.
Bear Claw: Stays long this high.
Jeremiah Johnson: March. Maybe, April.
Bear Claw: March maybe. I don't believe April. [rising to depart] March is a green muddy month down below, some folks like it, FARMERS mostly. You've done well to keep so much hair when so many's after it. I hope that you fare well.

View Quote [Bear Claw is talking to Paints-his-Shirt in Crow]
Jeremiah Johnson: You understand what he's sayin'?
Bear Claw Chris Lapp: Paints-His-Shirt speaks English, he just does this to aggravate me.

View Quote [Del and Jeremiah have run into a Flathead scouting party]
Del Gue: He wants to know if you are the great warrior who avenges the crazy women that lives in the Wolf Tail Valley. She's big medicine. You are too, if you be that man.
Jeremiah Johnson: [the Indian begins talking in a very loud voice] What's he shoutin' for?
Del Gue: Scared of ya.