Best The Outlander Quotes by Gil Adamson

"The world is full of stowaways. Frowsy little flowered weeds that dry out and crumble and float on the air to reproduce."

"Silence invites the mind to murmur; a dark wall waits like a canvas for imagined shapes."

"Life forces widowhood upon you. It is a burden to be alone, and a worse burden to be old and alone."

"There is art in madness, in its disastrous immediacy."

"Sins endure, yet we see the place of their atonement."

"Hope had been with her for a brief time, but this woman snuffed it out with a knobby thumb."

"The thing to be feared always came from within: exhaustion, unsound thoughts, ignorance, starvation."

"This was the locus of fear for her, a worm in the heart, where hope rotted in its dark whorls."

"Her will was strong enough, but she lacked the knowledge to help herself."

"Death did not come this way, lingering in the trees. It came by apoplexy. By cancer. By public hanging."

"Every American state had been filled in with a different colour, all of them tidied together like a box of sweets."

"Clarity and a disastrous elation. This was what church aspired to, a greatness in the hollowing mind, brought on by dissolution."

"Not a soul in the world knew where she was, and this knowledge gave her pleasure."

"The widow leaned deeply to avoid a branch and nearly fell from her saddle. She snorted with false amusement, to fool herself into feeling amused."

"Her mind spun in its dark bowl, seeking in vain a better way to see."

"The world was huge, endless, and the widow in her body was not."

"The burden of her own existence, the endless labour of it."

"She had tried to eat grasses, the soft cores of pine cones, white cold roots she’d dug up with her bootheels."

"She felt the burden of her own existence, the endless labour of it."

"She rubbed her face hard with the heels of her hands and took the pipe from the pocket of her coat as she rode."

"A night wind hissed wildly through the upper boughs and yet no breath reached down to her."

"The jury returned in ten minutes with an acquittal, and William Moreland was free."

"As soon as he was down the front steps of the courthouse building, the Ridgerunner was off again."

"The air grew cold and still. Snow fell through the cedars and covered her, covered everything else, until the whole night world was only snow, and she but a ripple in it."

"The wind picked up in the trees above them. The heat from the fire tormented her feet, even through the soggy boots, and so she angled her legs out into the dark."

"She felt the warmth of his thigh next to hers. After a long moment he took her hand."

"The world was huge, endless, and the widow in her body was not."
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"You see where those dogs are? You don’t go any closer than that."

"Habit," he had said and grinned at her so that she knew he had lied.

"Luck is the entertainment of gamblers and mystical old ladies."

"Because I don’t follow your miserable view of things? All right, that’s fine."

"The hand of some indifferent force passing through her and her little story without opinion."

"I’m sorry, " she shook her head sadly. "You’re all alone now."

"You’ll grow to love your husband, don’t worry, just as I did mine, and as your mother did. Nothing starts off right."

"Wake up." His voice came in the dark. A thin edge of a question in it — in her dream, he thought she was dead, that she’d died during the night.

"Sometimes I visit Bonny. Other times, I… don’t know where I am."

"She treats boys the way she’d treat a filthy dog — no, she treats dogs better — and I know where she got that."

"Standing at a rain-smeared window watching the massive oaks toss their heads."

"This is a town?" the widow asked, incredulous. "Where are all the people?"

"North wind is safe. It keeps everything in place. West wind is no problem either. But a south wind is bad. You fall apart in a south wind if you don’t keep moving."

"The righteous man is the most blessed of all God’s creatures because he has made his own place on earth."

"Effort is your salvation. Of course, there is no effort without error and shortcoming."

"Life itself is injury, the way bread is made of flour."

"What more can we do? We cannot know from which hand will come comfort, from which hand punishment."

"If you look for something long enough, it comes to look for you."

"You just sit there for a minute. That is your name, isn't it?"

"The mother dead of exhaustion when the youngest was two."

"Strangely, they all looked different, not like brothers at all."

"The mountain seemed to billow, then slowly collapse."

"She had never ridden anything but a 'girl’s horse.'"

"The greatest transgression was to allow a woman into the mine."

"The widow sat sewing atop a pile of buffalo hides."

"A cavalcade of horrors paraded before her eyes still."

"The widow’s eyes left her face and skated aimlessly."

"She was suddenly grateful that she was alive, relieved at how simple things were."