Will Varner: I was young myself once. I used to hide in the greenery and hoot and bellow.
Clara: I'll bet you did. I'll bet you stayed longest and yelled loudest.
Will Varner: Your mama listened.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: I'm gonna crawl over them books like an old fly over flypaper.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: I've been watching you. I like your push, yes. I like your style. I like your brass. It ain't too dissimilar from the way I operate.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: Listen, I'm gonna get me some man in the Varner family, some good strong strappin' man Varners. That's what I want, Varners and more Varners. Yeah, more Varners still. Enough Varners to infest the countryside. I'm gonna see that happen, sister, before I die. I'm gonna accomplish that, yes ma'am, by means of that Quick, that big stud horse.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: She has quality, quality. Which is as close as you and me will ever get to it.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: The man that built this place, his name's forgotten. This was his dream and his pride. Now it's dust. Must be a moral there somewhere.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: They don't have to see her. They can smell her.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Will Varner: You got hellfire and damnation in you, Jody Varner, but you got redemption too. When I think of the hate that put me in there and locked the door and set fire to it, and when I think of the love that wouldn't let me go... I got me a son again. I got me a good right arm - and a left.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Ben: If you're scared of me, mister, why don't you just come right out and say so?
Will Varner: Sir, why should I be scared of you?
Ben: 'Cause I got a reputation for being a dangerous man.
Will Varner: You're a young dangerous man. I'm an old one. I guess you don't know who I am. I better introduce myself. I'm the big landowner, chief moneylender in these parts. I'm commissioner of elections, veterinarian, own a store and a cotton gin and a grist mill and a blacksmith shop... and it's considered unlucky for a man to do his trading or gin his cotton or grind his meal or shoe his stock anywhere else. Now that's who I am.
Ben: You talk a lot.
Will Varner: Well, yes I do, sir. I'm done talking to you, except for passing you on this piece of information. I built me a new jail in my courthouse this year, and if during the course of your stay, something, anything at all should just happen to catch fire, I think you ought to know that in my jail, we never heard of the words habeas corpus. You rot.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer

Ben: Well, I'll be damned.
Will Varner: More than probable, you will be. But first, you're going to church and get married, yeah, to my daughter.


--Orson Welles (as Will Varner) in The Long, Hot Summer