Outlawed Quotes

“Knowledge can be very valuable... but only if people want it. If they don't, it can be worse than useless.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“When someone believes in something... you can't just take it away. You have to give them something to replace it.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“And so I began my criminal career there in the house of God, with a leaky pen instead of a pistol and books instead of silver for my reward.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“The point is, you live like I did, you start being able to spot what makes some people sink and other people swim. There’s a quality, I don’t even know how to describe it—sometimes it looks like luck and sometimes it looks like skill and sometimes it doesn’t look like either one. But you have it, I saw it when I met you. You’ve made a lot of mistakes, but you’re a good bet. You’ll swim.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Knowledge can be very valuable,” she said, “but only if people want it. If they don’t, it can be worse than useless.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“People cry witchcraft whenever they don’t understand something”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Hate, I saw, breeds a kind of closeness. I fell in step with him.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Knowledge can be very valuable, but only if people want it. If they don't, it can be worse than useless.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Then I could feel the quiet that only comes with knowing what you need to know. And I could teach other people what I knew.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Mama says at every birth, death is in the room. You can try to ignore it, or you can acknowledge it, and greet it like a guest, and then you won’t be so afraid anymore.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“If they take you, keep your head up. Don't beg for your life. Don't confess to any sin. If you die without shame, the shame is all theirs.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“What does He want from us?” I asked. The Kid bent close to me then, until our foreheads were touching. “He will make you father of many nations, Ada,” the Kid said. “Watch and see.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“When someone believes in something,” Mama said, “you can’t just take it away. You have to give them something to replace it. And since I don’t know what makes women barren, I’ve got nothing to give.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Take therefore no thought for the morrow ... for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“I hated my uselessness, the way my body had taken my family and my calling from me.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Mama did not believe in natural talent; she believed in wisdom.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“My gun would protect the innocent. I would be dangerous only to the wicked.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Everybody cheers the hanging of a witch," I said.
Agnes Rose looked at her dainty watch.
"Everybody but us," she said, and she took the matches from me and set one of the ledgers alight.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“last-minute costumes for Mothering Monday, baggy bright dresses for men and hats and mustaches for women, along with gray wigs to turn children into old grannies.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“This story ends in September in the year of our Lord 1895, when I came over the mountains a wife and a widow, a doctor and an outlaw, a robber and a killer and ever my mother’s daughter, and set up shop in the surgery of Mrs. Alice Schaeffer and got to work.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“If they take you, keep your head up. Don’t beg for your life. Don’t confess to any sin. If you die without shame, the shame is all theirs.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“In the year of our Lord 1894, I became an outlaw.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“It made me smile to think of myself as a wife to myself—the woman I could’ve been and the man I was pretending to be, both of them luckier in life than the person I really was.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“First things first,” Lo said. “You have to stand on both feet.” “I am standing on both feet,” I said. Lo kicked my left heel. I lost my balance and stumbled forward into the wardrobe, clinging to the coats to keep from falling on my face. “Sorry, little colt,” said Lo, laughing. “But you see what I mean now. Your weight’s all in your right foot. Men stand with their weight on both feet equally.” With both feet planted I felt both too heavy and too casual, a big clumsy kid about to barrel down a hill. “It feels strange,” I said. “It’s supposed to feel strange,” said Lo, crossing behind me. “Now hook your left thumb in your belt loop.” I did what I thought I had seen boys and men do, talking to one another at the feed store, loitering against the wall at a dance. Then I felt another kick and stumbled again, this time backward, pinwheeling my arms before regaining my balance. “You took the weight off your left leg,” Lo said. “I didn’t.” “If you hadn’t, little colt, you wouldn’t have fallen over. Now go ahead: do it again.” This time I was slower and more deliberate. “Good. Now the right—” Again I concentrated on holding my body in its odd new shape. “Very good. Now both thumbs.” The kick made me jump. “Ow!” I shouted. “Is this how you taught the others?” “It’s how I learned,” Lo said. “Who taught you,” I asked. “The Kid?” Lo laughed. “Please,” she said, “I taught the Kid and everyone else here.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Stop,” the Kid said. “At this rate, your pear’s friends are going to form up a posse and capture you before you harm a hair on their leader’s head.” I would have found the Kid amusing if I wasn’t so exhausted from trying to do something I clearly couldn’t do. “I’m sorry,” I said, tears gathering in my throat. “Assassins never apologize,” the Kid said. “Time to try another tack, Doctor. Put down your gun and point at the pear.” I didn’t understand, but I did as the Kid asked. “Now focus your eyes on the tip of your finger. Desert, water, et cetera.” I looked at my fingernail, black-rimmed from cleaning the firepit the night before. “Now focus on the pear.” I looked at the fruit, pale green splotched with scabby brown, a small thing grown tough in a hard place. “Now your finger again.” Back and forth we went, I don’t know how many times, but I know that when the Kid finally told me to try again with the gun, I understood how to let the target go and focus only on the sight, and I hit the pear square in the belly. “Excellent,” said the Kid. “Your first kill. Now do it again.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“Stop,” the Kid said. “At this rate, your pear’s friends are going to form up a posse and capture you before you harm a hair on their leader’s head.” I would have found the Kid amusing if I wasn’t so exhausted from trying to do something I clearly couldn’t do. “I’m sorry,” I said, tears gathering in my throat. “Assassins never apologize,” the Kid said. “Time to try another tack, Doctor. Put down your gun and point at the pear.” I didn’t understand, but I did as the Kid asked. “Now focus your eyes on the tip of your finger. Desert, water, et cetera.” I looked at my fingernail, black-rimmed from cleaning the firepit the night before. “Now focus on the pear.” I looked at the fruit, pale green splotched with scabby brown, a small thing grown tough in a hard place. “Now your finger again.” Back and forth we went, I don’t know how many times, but I know that when the Kid finally told me to try again with the gun, I understood how to let the target go and focus only on the sight, and I hit the pear square in the belly.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“The Kid lifted the revolver and squinted an eye. “Now, once you have your enemy—in this case your pear—in your sights, what do you do next?” “Pull the trigger?” I asked. “Very good,” the Kid said. “You pull the trigger. But when you do, you don’t move your hand—if you do, the gun will move, and you’ll miss your shot. You don’t move your arm—if you do, the gun will move, and you’ll miss your shot. You don’t move your shoulder—if you do, the gun will move, and you’ll miss your shot. The only part of your whole God-given body that moves is your solitary index finger, and if you can manage that, and you keep your eye on the front sight like it’s water in the desert, why then your unlucky pear will soon have breathed his last.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“I brought Amity here when she was a foal. That was four years ago. She grew up on this land. You learn it from her, not the other way around.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“I can set a bone,” I said to the Kid. “I can bind a wound. If you get a chill, I know the herbs to warm you, and if you get a fever, I know the herbs to cool you down. I can stitch a cut, I can drain a boil, I can dress a burn so the skin heals clean. I can grind a medicine to put a man to sleep, and if I grind enough, I can make him sleep forever.” The strangers were quiet. The Kid looked at me for a minute, like measuring, then smiled. “Texas, find the good doctor a horse she can handle.” And that’s how I joined the Hole in the Wall Gang, in 1894 when I was eighteen years old.”
― Anna North, Outlawed

“In the convent they had tried to teach me humility. Sister Dolores told us worldly knowledge and accomplishments are nothing to baby Jesus; they are like a cloth that falls away, leaving us naked as infants before him. But she also said baby Jesus would use us to do good in the world, and I didn’t understand how He could use us if our knowledge didn’t matter to Him, if we were nothing more than defenseless babies in His eyes. And so when the sisters asked us to pray for humility, to ask forgiveness for our pride and self-love, I said my own prayers to remind myself who I was and where I came from, so I would remember even if I pretended to forget, even if I took the vows and habit and lived my life under another name.”
― Anna North, Outlawed