The Outlaw Album Quotes

“Stop, Janet said. Stop—that’s a woman. A woman in green, adrift and alone, way out here in the woods and mist. Dalrymple always enjoyed the way Janet said things when she was off her meds. Her words then put special color to events, events he usually witnessed but hadn’t noted any special color or significance to until she retold the event a minute after it happened. She’d built him a bunch of favorite memories that way. He’d hate to lose her. What kind of woman is that? She’s lookin’ like a man out here, so men passin’ won’t snatch her up and keep her chained in the basement. You sure got a bad thing about men. I got a bad thing about everybody if you pay attention.”
― Daniel Woodrell, The Outlaw Album

“In the story that happens to me so often, asleep or wide awake, I had got down on my hands and knees to collect red and white parts of Lt. Voorhees, from when his brain-housing unit came apart in his quarters, skull chunks denting the ceiling, teeth and ears splatted to the walls, brains a clotting spray—a story that happens to me whenever it wants to, and I can’t shunt it aside or stuff it in a box, but can only accept the sunken feelings it deals me time and again. A few times Dad showed up to help me collect the cracked bone and stringy glop, clumped hair, kneeling beside me in a foreign place, calling me “son” while we raised a wet pile. Some days I start hearing the final words Lt. Voorhees said before closing his door that night spoken over and over, at different volumes in my head, all day long, low to loud, Hope I dream about daylight again.”
― Daniel Woodrell, The Outlaw Album