Choices Quotes in No Country for Old Men

Bell draws a distinction between crimes of passion and premediated murders, making it clear that for him, the person who chooses to murder deserves a harsher punishment, like the death penalty, precisely because there is deliberate choice involved in premeditated murder.

Llewelyn thinks it's a mistake to take the surviving Mexican drug runner a jug of water, but he chooses to do so, anyway. Why does he make this choice, even though he thinks it's a stupid one?

In brief sentences like these, we think "thought about his life" is a shorthand way of saying "considering the choices he has made to lead him here." But do you think Llewelyn regrets them?

Once again, Llewelyn thinks about his life. He keeps making choices that get him deeper and deeper into trouble. Was there one fatal choice that changed everything forever? Or were there a series of choices? Both?

Llewelyn is talking to the unnamed hitchhiker here, and he's basically telling her that it's a bad idea to stick around with him. (He's right.) However, he can't make that choice for her; she has to decide herself. And she chooses wrong.

Bell has reached a point in his life when he regrets some of his big choices, so he has to try and ignore them. He has to choose to not think about his choices. Is that even possible?

One choice leads to another, which leads to another, and another, and often, these choices all lead in the same direction. You rarely take a U-turn. It may even be impossible to make a full U-turn. Bell made a choice that left him with a sense of guilt. By choosing not to talk about it, though, he lets that guilt just build up.

Here, Bell does take that U-turn in attempt to undo some of his past choices. He confesses his bad choice, and he gets support from his uncle. Some choices are had, but we have to make them. This is the first step Bell takes to atoning for his choice. Is it ever too late to start that journey?

Bell seems like a person who believes in karma, although he probably wouldn't use a hippy-dippy word like that. But from this line, we see that he believes that choices have consequences. At least, that's what he has to tell himself. In this book, we see people who make no bad choices be killed, and we see people who make horrible choices (like Chigurh, who chooses to kill victim after victim) live to choose again another day. But it's also possible that karma works in mysterious ways; maybe Chigurh will get what's coming to him one day.

Guess who spoke this line. You can't? Yeah, it could come from almost any character in the book, couldn't it? This quote actually comes from a very minor character, one of the youngest—one of the boys Chigurh pays for a T-shirt. By covering up for Chigurh, this boy allowed the bad guy to get away. He might live with that guilt forever.