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I've spent more than twenty years looking for answers, Roger, and I can tell you only one thing: There aren't any answers, only choices. I've made a number of them myself, and no one can tell me whether they were right or wrong. -- Diana Gabaldon
Me. The cloud cover had parted for a moment and the light touched the -- Diana Gabaldon
They do say that God protects fools - but I think even the Almighty will lose patience now and then. -- Diana Gabaldon
Some nights, he even slept. -- Diana Gabaldon
She was more like riding a sofa than a horse, with her broad back and sides curved like a hogshead of beer. -- Diana Gabaldon
It is strange," Mr. Willoughby said, and the air of reflection in his voice was echoed exactly by Jamie's, "but it was my joy of women that Second Wife saw and loved in my words. Yet by desiring to possess me - and my poems - she would have forever destroyed what she admired." Mr. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ian, man, I didna tell ye because I didna wish to lose you too. My brother was gone, and my father. I didna mean to lose my own heart's blood as well. For you are dearer to me even than home and family, love.'She cast a lopsided smile at Jamie. 'And that's saying quite a bit. -- Diana Gabaldon
While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye ken how to pick a good lass, MacKenzie? Start at the bottom and work your way up! -- Diana Gabaldon
My own smile lingered as I watched her, and whispered to her sleep-deaf ears, as I had so many times before, God, you are so like him. -- Diana Gabaldon
I had not slept with many men other than my husband, but I had noticed that before to sleep, actually sleep with someone did give this sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out of you to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconscious knowing. -- Diana Gabaldon
To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. -- Diana Gabaldon
While most people became irritable when hungry, a redheaded person with an empty stomach was a walking time bomb. -- Diana Gabaldon
Every legend has one foot on the truth. -- Diana Gabaldon
I am a sassenach, after all," I said, seeing it. He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile. "Aye, mo duinne. But you're my sassenach. -- Diana Gabaldon
And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I've served ye well. -- Diana Gabaldon
So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie -- Diana Gabaldon
People will treat with disdain such phenomena as are proved by the evidence of the senses, and commonly experienced - while they will defend to the death the reality of a phenomenon which they have neither seen nor experienced. -- Diana Gabaldon
Rain was roaring on the tin roof now, and lightning struck close by, blue-white and sharp with ozone. We rode it together, forked and light-blind, breathless, and the thunder rolled through our bones. -- Diana Gabaldon
If you find him," she whispered, "when you find my father - give him this." She bent and kissed me, fiercely, gently, then straightened and turned me toward the stone. "Go, Mama," she said, breathless. "I love you. Go! -- Diana Gabaldon
I read all the time. People ask, 'Do you read while you work?' And I say, 'I better.' I take two or three years to finish one of my enormous books, and I can't go that long without reading. -- Diana Gabaldon
Joy. Fear. Fear, most of all." His hand came up and smoothed my curls away from his nose
"I havena been afraid for a verra long time, Sassenach," he whispered. "But now I think I am. For there is something to be lost, now." Page 394 -- Diana Gabaldon
You're real, he whispered. I had thought him pale already. Now all vestiges of color drained from his face. -- Diana Gabaldon
For a moment, half blinded by dirt, I couldn't see Jamie at all. Then I spotted him. He was under the bear, one arm locked around its neck, his head tucked into the joint of the shoulder just under the drooling jaws. -- Diana Gabaldon
Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed. -- Diana Gabaldon
I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart. -- Diana Gabaldon
If I'd known I should meet a damn bear, Jamie said, grunting as he lifted another stone into place, I would have taken another path. -- Diana Gabaldon
If ye have to ask yourself if you're in love, laddie - then ye aren't, -- Diana Gabaldon
I glanced upward once, to see Brianna glowing, still smiling from ear to ear. Jamie was behind her, also smiling, his cheeks wet with tears. He said something to her in husky Gaelic, and brushing the hair away from her neck, leaned forward and kissed her gently, just behind the ear -- Diana Gabaldon
She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition. -- Diana Gabaldon
Christ, was he going to die in public, in a pleasure garden, in the company of a sodomite spy dressed like a rooster? -- Diana Gabaldon
What, she's taken the hairs off her honeypot?" he said, horrified into uncharacteristic vulgarity. -- Diana Gabaldon
Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing. Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words. -- Diana Gabaldon
Blood of my Blood," he whispered, "and bone of my bone. You carry me within ye, Claire, and ye canna leave me now, no matter what happens, You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go. -- Diana Gabaldon
The removal of his infected adenoids and tonsils had not cured Keziah's deafness, but had improved it markedly. He -- Diana Gabaldon
He shook his head slowly from side to side, as though it were very heavy. I could almost hear the contents sloshing. -- Diana Gabaldon
Massive edifice, with its impenetrable walls, its monumental gate, and its red-coated guards, I began to have doubts. What -- Diana Gabaldon
When the day shall come that we do part," he said softly, and turned to look at me, "if my last words are not 'I love you'-ye'll ken it was because I didna have time. -- Diana Gabaldon
There were some chains you wore because you wanted to. -- Diana Gabaldon
And sometimes," I whispered to him, "I wish it could be you inside me. That I could take you into me and keep you safe always." His hand, large and warm, lifted slowly from the bed and cupped the small round swell of my belly, sheltering and caressing. "You do, my own," he said. "You do. -- Diana Gabaldon
You cannot compel love," he said finally, "nor summon it at will. Still less," he added ruefully, "can you dismiss it. -- Diana Gabaldon
If I take my time to ready you" (if he could take his time, amended his brain), "I think it will be not much worse than a pinch. -- Diana Gabaldon
Let me tell ye in your sleep how much I love you. For there's no so much I can be saying to ye while ye wake, but the same poor words, again and again. While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them. Go -- Diana Gabaldon
It was a hound of some sort, black and disproportionately long-bodied, with lets so stumpy that they appeared to have been amputated. With large, liquid eyes and a sturdy long tail in constant motion, it resembled nothing so much as and exceedingly amiable sausage. -- Diana Gabaldon
We currently enjoy the hospitality of the local smith, a gentleman named Heughan. -- Diana Gabaldon
I'll tell ye, Sassenach; if ever I feel the need to change my manner of employment, I dinna think I'll take up attacking women - it's a bloody hard way to make a living. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ian made a dissentient noise through his nose. Aye, and if I were to try bein' a Friend, who would there be to protect the lot of 'em? Rachel and her brother and Dottie, I mean. Ye ken that, don't ye? That they can only be what they are because you and I are what we are? -- Diana Gabaldon
On Roger's jacket. Claire sat in the stern, blinking, but still -- Diana Gabaldon
And you, my Sassenach? What were you born for? To be lady of a manor, or to sleep in the fields like a gypsy? To be a healer, or a don's wife, or an outlaw's lady?"
"I was born for you," I said simply, and held out my arms to him. -- Diana Gabaldon
You'll have to keep it up for longer than that, if you expect ecstatic moans," I answered. "Two minutes doesn't deserve any more than a giggle. -- Diana Gabaldon
Egg-sucking son of a porcupine! -- Diana Gabaldon
One leg was stained with blood down to the ankle, and he walked with a ginger, spraddled gait, but he would on no account let a "wumman" lay hands on him to see what was the matter. -- Diana Gabaldon
Shall be verra pleased when he's taken his damned cheroots -- Diana Gabaldon
But we do not fear silence, for often God speaks loudest in the quiet of our hearts. And -- Diana Gabaldon
I chose my way when I wed ye, though I kent it not at the time. But I chose, and cannot now turn back, even if I would.'
'Would you?' I looked into his eyes as I asked, and read the answer there. He shook his head.
'Would you? For you have chosen, as much as I. -- Diana Gabaldon
That's what he got for neglecting his work to go on wild-goose chases to impress a girl -- Diana Gabaldon
She felt his eyes on her, and returned his stare, unblinking. "I should say they'd find her handsome, though; they do like a woman as is sweetly plump. -- Diana Gabaldon
I like ye fat, Sassenach," he said softly. "Fat and juicy as a plump wee hen. I like it fine. -- Diana Gabaldon
Evidently, women are capable of experiencing rational thought and sexual arousal simultaneously, because I appeared to be doing precisely that. -- Diana Gabaldon
Papa says that wars take three generations to fade from the ground where they're fought. And from what I've seen, Friends have quite long memories, as well." "He might just have a point. -- Diana Gabaldon
An eye-jangling assortment of spurious clan tartans, adorning every conceivable object made of fabric, from caps, neckties, and serviettes down to a particularly horrid yellow "Buchanan" sett used to make men's nylon Y-front underpants. -- Diana Gabaldon
But we must not judge, thee knows, most particularly by appearance. Even one who seems most frivolous, spendthrift, or light-minded yet has a soul and is valuable before God. -- Diana Gabaldon
There's always a prayer, a nighean, even if it's only A Dhia, cuidich mi. Oh, God - help me. -- Diana Gabaldon
He could feel the shape of his eyeballs beneath his lids, round and hot, tasty bits of jelly rolling restless to and fro, looking vainly for oblivion, while the rising sun turned his lids a dark and bloody red. -- Diana Gabaldon
I was sorry that I'd told him, but I had no defenses anymore. I could not lie, even for the best of reasons; there was simply no place to go, nowhere to hide. I felt beset by whispering ghosts, their loss, their need, their desperate love pulling me apart. Apart from Jamie, apart from myself. -- Diana Gabaldon
Testosterone poisoning, -- Diana Gabaldon
You know Mountgerald, the big house at the end of the High Street? There's a ghost there, a workman on the house who was killed as a sacrifice for the foundation. In the eighteenth century sometime; that's really fairly recent," he added thoughtfully. -- Diana Gabaldon
Death walks at night in the aisles of a sick ward, searching for those whose defenses are lowered, who may stray unwittingly into its path through loneliness and fear. -- Diana Gabaldon
D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms-my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten. -- Diana Gabaldon
No. Ye loved him. I canna hold it against either of you that ye mourn him. And it gives me some comfort to know ... " He hesitated, and I reached up to smooth the rumpled hair off his face.
"To know what?"
"That should the need come, you might mourn for me that way," he said softly. -- Diana Gabaldon
And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life? -- Diana Gabaldon
Uncomfortable, but safe, -- Diana Gabaldon
He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, "Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children." Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her throught the veils of time. -- Diana Gabaldon
There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark and the light, and when both and neither surround you. -- Diana Gabaldon
The other men also disarmed, as was suitable in the house of God, leaving an impressively bristling pile of lethality in the back pew. -- Diana Gabaldon
His flesh seemed to melt comfortably into Roger's own, his trust so complete that it was not necessary even to maintain the boundaries of his body - Daddy would do that. -- Diana Gabaldon
I have yearned always," he said softly, "for love given and returned; have spent my life in the attempt to give my love to those who were not worthy of it. Allow me this: to give my life for the sake of one who is. -- Diana Gabaldon
Thee is my wolf," she'd said to him. "And if thee hunts at night, thee will come home." "And sleep at thy feet," he'd replied. -- Diana Gabaldon
While Fergus was possessed of dark good looks and a dashing manner that might well win a young girl's heart, he lacked a few of the things that might appeal somewhat more to conservative Scottish parents, such as property, income, a left hand, and a last name. -- Diana Gabaldon
If you could do such a thing as that-and I don't mean lying with a woman, I mean doing it and lying to me about it-then everything I've done and everything I've been-my whole life-has been a lie. And I am not prepared to admit such a thing. -- Diana Gabaldon
There are things ye maybe canna tell me, he had said. I willna ask ye, or force ye. But when ye do tell me something, let it be the truth. There is nothing between us now but respect, and respect has room for secrets, I think - but not for lies. -- Diana Gabaldon
The headline read RETURNED FROM THE DEAD. Beneath was a picture of Claire Randall, twenty years younger, but looking little different than she did now, bar -- Diana Gabaldon
It's not what's happened or what's about to happen; what's important is the sense of emotional uncertainty between the characters and the delicacy of the mutual trust being established. -- Diana Gabaldon
Peering at the crest, with its faded leopard couchant, -- Diana Gabaldon
I could see the water purling away from keeled scales that ran in a crest down the sinuous neck. -- Diana Gabaldon
If you can't look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it's there - take it out or change it. -- Diana Gabaldon
He said there was always an hour in the day when time seems to stop - but that it was different for everyone. He thought it might be the hour when one was born. -- Diana Gabaldon
I hadn't spent so much time in bemused contemplation of a penis since I was sixteen or so, and here I was, preoccupied with three of the things. -- Diana Gabaldon
Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own ... and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved. -- Diana Gabaldon
Alive, and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us. 'The grave's a fine and private place/ but none, I think, do there embrace. -- Diana Gabaldon
Does it ever stop? The wanting you? -- Diana Gabaldon
Everyone makes choices, and no one knows what may be the end of any of them. If my own was to blame for many things, it was not to blame for everything. Nor was harm all that had come of it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Can I help you? She was middle height and very pretty. He had an overall impression of fine bones and white linen, topped with a wealth of curly brown hair in a sort of half-tamed chignon. And in the middle of it all, the most extraordinary pair of light eyes, just the color of well-aged sherry. -- Diana Gabaldon
All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it. -- Diana Gabaldon
You'd die for them, happily," Hal had said, in the long night watch when I'd kept him breathing. "Your family. But at the same time you think, Christ, I can't die! What might happen to them if I weren't here? -- Diana Gabaldon
Mr. Farquard Campbell, the butler said quietly, and stood back against the wall. -- Diana Gabaldon
If I were marooned here till it suited my overbearing, domineering, pig-headed jackass of a husband to finish risking his stupid neck, I'd use the time to see what I could spot. -- Diana Gabaldon
Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her
and you ... And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing
as he knew of me
that he will protect you with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad. -- Diana Gabaldon
I felt sick when I thought of the end - but I really wanted to remember how. How it felt, and how I did it, so maybe I can do it again, with Roger. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie shook his head at me admiringly. "And here I thought I married you because ye had a fair face and a fine fat arse. To think you've a brain as well!" He neatly dodged the blow I aimed at his ear, and grinned at me. -- Diana Gabaldon
Will you bloody say something?" I demanded at last, in a voice that shook oiliv a little. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He shook his head slowly from side to side. "Jesus," he whispered at last. -- Diana Gabaldon
Madam," he said, speaking very softly into her face. "I do not want your money. My wife does not want it. And my son will not have it. Cram it up your hole, aye? -- Diana Gabaldon
Your aunt's a handsome woman, Fraser, but she could freeze the ballocks off the King o' Japan, and she wanted to. -- Diana Gabaldon
Until we two be burned to ashes. -- Diana Gabaldon
A friend once told me 'The body has nay conscience.' I dinna ken that that's entirely so-but it is true that the body doesna generally admit the possibility of nonexistence. And if ye exist-well, ye need food, that's all. -- Diana Gabaldon
It was a blur," people say. What they really mean is the impossibility of anyone truly entering such an experience from outside, the futility of explanation. -- Diana Gabaldon
Feel my heart," he said. His voice sounded thick to his own ears. "Tell me if it stops. -- Diana Gabaldon
With a sudden jerk of her bulky handbag, Claire Randall had bumped both whisky glasses off the table, showering Roger's lap and thighs with single malt whisky -- Diana Gabaldon
Are you alright?"
"No, I bumped my head." Rubbing the spot, I looked dazedly around the bare hallway.
"What did I bang it on?" I demanded ungrammatically.
"My head." he said, rather grumpily, I thought. -- Diana Gabaldon
That to sleep, actually sleep with someone did give this sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out of you to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconscious knowing. A -- Diana Gabaldon
the medical way for a two-month voyage. -- Diana Gabaldon
Gentle he would be, denied he would not. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well I am still not drunk" I straightened up against the pillows as best I could. "You told me once that if you could still stand up, you weren't drunk."
You aren't standing up." he point out.
You are. -- Diana Gabaldon
They say it's a wise bairn that kens its father, but I dinna think there's much doubt who yours is, lass. Ye might have had the lang nebbit and red locks from anyone, but ye didna get the stubbornness from any man but Jamie Fraser. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ian did, with a blackened eye, skinned knuckles, and the terse report that Manfred had declared a set intention of going off and hanging himself, and good riddance to the fornicating son of a bitch, and might his rotten bowels gush forth like Judas Iscariot's, the traitorous, stinking wee turd. -- Diana Gabaldon
I'll thank ye," said a cool, level voice, "to take your hands off my wife. -- Diana Gabaldon
Put your trust in God, and pray for guidance. And when in doubt, eat. A Franciscan monk had once given me that advice, and on the whole, I had found it useful. -- Diana Gabaldon
Mm, you're nice to croodle wi', he murmured, doing what I assumed was croodling. -- Diana Gabaldon
with thick stone walls and high, slitted -- Diana Gabaldon
Any piece of good music is in essence a love song. -- Diana Gabaldon
squeezed her heart. Claire murmured something, -- Diana Gabaldon
Within an hour, I had gone from anguish at the thought of losing him in Scotland, to a strong desire to bed him in the herbaceous borders, and from that to a pronounced urge to hit him on the head with an oar. Now I was back to tenderness. -- Diana Gabaldon
It doesn't matter, really, does it, sweet'art?" he said, still smiling lazily. "Not after what's 'appened already. What's once more, eh? And I'm an Englishman, too," he coaxed. "Not a filthy Scot. -- Diana Gabaldon
The law's a necessary evil
we canna be doing without it
but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience? -- Diana Gabaldon
I'm afraid that my wife picked up a number of colorful expressions from the Yanks and such, Frank offered, with a nervous smile.
True, I said, gritting my teeth as I wrapped a water-soaked napkin about my hand. Men tend to be very colorful when you're picking shrapnel out of them. -- Diana Gabaldon
Actually, it wasn't bad," Claire said, surprisingly. "Mullein leaves are really very nice; quite as good as two-ply bathroom tissue. And in the winter or indoors, it was usually a bit of damp rag; not very sanitary, but comfortable enough. -- Diana Gabaldon
I finished grating a root and dropped the stub into a jar on the desk. Bloodroot is aptly named; the scientific name is Sanguinaria, and the juice is red, acrid, and sticky. The bowl in my lap was full of oozy, moist shavings, and my hands looked as though I had been disemboweling small animals. -- Diana Gabaldon
We believe the light of Christ is present in all men - though in some cases, perceiving it is somewhat difficult, -- Diana Gabaldon
The Crown doesna always pick the wrong man to hang, Sassenach," he said. "More often than not, the man on the end of a rope deserves to be there. And I shouldna like to think I've helped a villain to go free. -- Diana Gabaldon
And if she wasn't precisely pretty, she had a force of character that is often more attractive than simple beauty. -- Diana Gabaldon
There were still choices to be made, decisions to reach, actions to take. Many of them. But in one ... single declaration of intent, we stepped across the threshold of war. -- Diana Gabaldon
We look in the mirror and see the shades of other faces looking back through the years; we see the shape of memory, standing solid in an empty doorway. By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves. -- Diana Gabaldon
You've not been sleeping proper," Byrd said accusingly. "I can tell. You've been a-wallowing on your pillow; your hair's a right rat's nest! -- Diana Gabaldon
Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all.
Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie's own face was lined with shadow, the firelight showing the mark of time and struggle on his flesh as wind and rain mark stone. -- Diana Gabaldon
But what I do say is that there is nothing in this world or the next that can take ye from me - or me from you. -- Diana Gabaldon
Motioned to the sergeant-major to turn the prisoner around to show his back. -- Diana Gabaldon
I'll be setting off just after the Angelus bell- at noon, I mean - should that suit your honors. -- Diana Gabaldon
Roger wondered if this was the sort of way you felt after a battle; the sheer relief of finding yourself alive and unwounded made you want to laugh and arse about, just to prove you still could. -- Diana Gabaldon
crepuscle, the mysterious half-light that comes at both ends of the day, when the small secret things come out to feed. There -- Diana Gabaldon
He's a man...and that's no small thing to be. -- Diana Gabaldon
I want him." I had not said that to Jamie at our marriage; I had not wanted him, then. But I had said it since, three times; in two moments of choice at Craigh na Dun, and once again at Lallybroch.
"I want him." I wanted him still, and nothing whatever could stand between us. -- Diana Gabaldon
And if she had not come back to me ... if you had not come ... if I had known for sure that both of you were dead ... Then I would still have lived ... and done what must be done. So will you. -- Diana Gabaldon
No, my Sassenach", he said softly. "Open your eyes. Look at me. For that is your punishment, as it is mine. See what you have done to me, as I have done to you. Look at me. -- Diana Gabaldon
I estimated the ambient humidity at roughly a thousand percent, but tipped a little of my sweetened coffee into the saucer and blew on it nonetheless. -- Diana Gabaldon
No, how should I fear the touch of those vanished hands laid on me in love knowing? How could I be afraid of those that molded my flesh, leaving their remnants to live long past the grave? -- Diana Gabaldon
Amo, amas, I love a lass, As cedar tall and slender; Sweet cowslip's grace Is her nominative case, And she's o' the feminine gender. -- Diana Gabaldon
She hesitated for a long moment, but then nodded quickly, as though afraid she would regret the action if she paused to think about it longer. -- Diana Gabaldon
[Jamie] shook his head, looking stunned. I canna tell whether ye mean to compliment my virility, Sassenach, or insult my morals, but I dinna care much for either suggestion. Murtagh told me women were unreasonable, but Jesus God! -- Diana Gabaldon
Murtagh was one of those men who always looked a bit startled to find that women had voices, but he nodded politely enough. -- Diana Gabaldon
What is it ye have there, Murtagh? -- Diana Gabaldon
The Indian was a gentleman named Sequoyah, somewhat older than the young Wilsons and their friends. He nodded soberly to Jamie, and swinging the bundle off his shoulder, laid it on the ground at Jamie's feet, saying something in Cherokee. -- Diana Gabaldon
Christ! Ye scairt the bowels out of me. -- Diana Gabaldon
Then the room relaxed in cheers and babbling, and she turned in his arms to kiss him hard and cling to him, and he thought perhaps it didn't matter that they faced in opposite directions - so long as they faced each other.'
Roger Wakefield {Drums Of Autumn} -- Diana Gabaldon
Up, no?" said Ian soothingly. "Come now, mi dhu, ye shouldna worrit yourself, it's bad for the babe. And the shouting troubles wee Jamie too." He reached out for his son, who was whimpering, not -- Diana Gabaldon
Think it's as though everyone has a small place inside themselves, maybe, a private bit that they keep to themselves. It's like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives - maybe it's your soul, maybe just that bit that makes you yourself and not anyone else. -- Diana Gabaldon
Don't go overboard in avoiding "said." Basically, "said" is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it's an invisible word that doesn't draw attention to itself. -- Diana Gabaldon
Away from home. Young children stray from their parents and are never seen again. Housewives reach the end of their tether and take the grocery money and a taxi to the station. International financiers change their names and vanish -- Diana Gabaldon
And what's wrong wi' the way ye smell?' he said heatedly. 'At least ye smelt like a woman, not a damn flower garden. What d'ye think I am, a man or a bumblebee? Would ye wash yourself, Sassenach, so I can get within less than ten feet of ye? -- Diana Gabaldon
Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion
and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder ... -- Diana Gabaldon
Restlessly, I moved around the surgery, picking things up and putting them down again. -- Diana Gabaldon
I work late at night. I'm awake and nobody bothers me. It's quiet and things come and talk to me in the silence. -- Diana Gabaldon
No, blast it! I can't even shoot the bastard, without dishonoring my brother's sworn word! -- Diana Gabaldon
Still I dinna expect anything to happen to me. But if it should ... If it does, then I want there to be a place for you; I want someone for you to go to if I am ... not there to care for you. If it canna be me, then I would have it be a man who loves you. -- Diana Gabaldon
so he died, at the conclusion of an eminently useful life, and thus obtained his crown in Paradise. -- Diana Gabaldon
Sometimes I want to ride you like a wild horse, and bring you to the taming - did you know that? I can do it, you know I can. Drag you over the edge and drain you to a gasping husk. I can drive you to the edge of collapse and sometimes I delight in it, -- Diana Gabaldon
The good man's only singularity lies in his approving welcome to every experience the looms of fate may weave for him, -- Diana Gabaldon
I was crying for joy, my Sassenach,' he said softly. He reached out slowly and took my face between his hands. And thanking God that I have two hands. That I have two hands to hold you with. To serve you with, to love you with. Thanking God that I am a whole man still, because of you. -- Diana Gabaldon
I sat down quietly in a corner with my glass of port, and kept quiet while Simon questioned Jamie once again about Charles Stuart's situation and prospects. -- Diana Gabaldon
Some hae meat that canna eat, And some could eat that want it. We hae meat, and we can eat, And so may God be thankit. Amen. -- Diana Gabaldon
How many 'inventions' are really memories, of the things we once knew? -- Diana Gabaldon
Wat's tes-tees?" inquired a small voice. Jemmy had abandoned his rocks and was looking up at me in profound interest. "Er ... " I said. I glanced round the room in search of aid. "That's Latin for your balls, lad," Roger said gravely, suppressing a grin. -- Diana Gabaldon
Has he come armed, then?" she asked anxiously. "Has he brought a pistol or a sword?"
Ian shook his head, his dark hair lifting wildly in the wind.
"Oh, no, Mam!" he said. "It's worse. He's brought a lawyer! -- Diana Gabaldon
A Highlander in full regalia is an impressive sight - any Highlander, no matter how old, ill-favored, or crabbed in appearance. A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored Highlander in the prime of his life is breathtaking. -- Diana Gabaldon
Quite suddenly she understood the impulse that caused men to engage in casual blasphemy. -- Diana Gabaldon
She supposed she ought to feel exposed in some way, the privacy of her thoughts and dreams laid bare to him - but she trusted him with them. He would never use those things against her. -- Diana Gabaldon
The truth is always of use, madonna," he answered, eyes fixed on the slender stream. "It has the value of rarity, you know. -- Diana Gabaldon
Seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction. -- Diana Gabaldon
I thought I could make out Jamie's Highland screech, but that was likely imagination; they all sounded equally demented. -- Diana Gabaldon
Some kinds of hunger were sweet in themselves, the anticipation of satisfaction as keen a pleasure as the slaking. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, womanly sympathy, love AND food?" I said, laughing. "Don't want a lot, do you? -- Diana Gabaldon
You're the world I have," she murmured, and then her breathing changed, and she took him down with her into safety. -- Diana Gabaldon
It is easier to kill someone to save your own life than it is to hurt someone to save theirs. -- Diana Gabaldon
I suppose ye might give him a wee dram that would keep him quiet so ye could tell them he was gone. Or maybe lock him in a closet? Tied up wi' a gag if it should be he's got his voice back by then, he added. Germain was a very logical, thorough-minded sort of person; he got it from Marsali. -- Diana Gabaldon
Still, the novelty of any letter or package was sufficient that no one suggested opening it until the full measure of enjoyment should have been extracted from speculation about its contents. -- Diana Gabaldon
For there's a part of me would like no better than to take you and the bairn and go far away, to spend the rest of my life working the fields and the beasts, to come in in the evenings and lie beside ye, quiet through the night. -- Diana Gabaldon
He had learned early on the trick of living separately in a crowd, private in his mind when his body could not be. But he was born a mountain-dweller, and had learned early, too, the enchantment of solitude, and the healing of quiet places. -- Diana Gabaldon
Being in a state of grace is all very well, but I imagine even Joan of Arc had qualms when they lit the first brand. -- Diana Gabaldon
If you'll not let me be spiritual about it, you'll have to put up wi' my baser nature. I'm going to be a beast." He bit my neck. "Do ye want me to be a horse, a bear, or a dog? -- Diana Gabaldon
I want to take ye to bed. In my bed. And I mean to spend the rest of the day thinking
what to do wit ye once I got ye there. So wee Archie can just go and play at marbles
with his bollucks, aye? -- Diana Gabaldon
He said the greatest thing in a man's life is to lie wi' a woman he loves," he said softly. He smiled at me, eyes blue as the sky overhead. "He was right. -- Diana Gabaldon
It was the first breath of the new moon, but the whole of it was visible, a perfect ball of violet and indigo cupped in a sickle of light, luminous among the stars. -- Diana Gabaldon
You don't have any hair at all at the tops of your thighs," I said, admiring the smooth white skin there. "Why is that, do you think?"
"The cow licked it off the last time she milked me," he said between his teeth. "For God's sake, Sassenach! -- Diana Gabaldon
I love you, a nighean donn. I have loved ye from the moment I saw ye, I will love ye 'til time itself is done, and so long as you are by my side, I am well pleased wi' the world. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie felt a strong desire to go across and see what the open books were, to go to the shelves and run his knuckles gently over the leather and wood and buckrum of the bindings until a book should speak to him and come willingly into his hand. -- Diana Gabaldon
A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?" he demanded.
No, I thought. I won't. I will not. But I did. "Very carefully," I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought. -- Diana Gabaldon
Fraser stood quite still for a moment, breathing slowly and regarding Woodbine as a tiger might regard a hedgehog: yes, he could eat it, but would the inconvenience of swallowing be worth it? -- Diana Gabaldon
To fight on the winning side was one thing; to survive, quite another. -- Diana Gabaldon
A fistula is a passage between two things that ought never to be joined and is, generally speaking, a bad thing. -- Diana Gabaldon
Towering pines and hemlocks, was it? I thought, clambering over the burled knots of a fallen tree. The monstrous trunks rose so high that the lowest limbs started twenty feet above my head. Longfellow had no idea. -- Diana Gabaldon
The implication was reasonably clear; I condemned him, and his minions would be round promptly to cut off my nipples and burn Jared's warehouse. I licked dry lips, cursing Louis. Why couldn't he just have wanted my body? -- Diana Gabaldon
Aye, verra good. Now then, if ye'll just put your hands above your head and seize the bedstead - -- Diana Gabaldon
Marketing with a small baby was more like a ninety-minute expedition into Darkest Borneo, requiring massive amounts of equipment and tremendous expenditures of energy. -- Diana Gabaldon
Do you have any idea how mortifying it is to have your own mother standing up in front of everybody, drawing pictures of penises? -- Diana Gabaldon
Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting? -- Diana Gabaldon
As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools. -- Diana Gabaldon
He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces. -- Diana Gabaldon
I am a Highlander," Jamie said bleakly. He glanced once more at the far bank, where occasional glimpses of tartan showed through the mist, and then back. The shouting echoed from the fog. "And I am the sire of Americans. -- Diana Gabaldon
I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don't know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces. -- Diana Gabaldon
Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me? -- Diana Gabaldon
I didn't want to tell the story of what makes two people come together, although that's a theme of great power and universality. I wanted to find out what it takes for two people to stay together for fifty years
or more. I wanted to tell not the story of courtship, but the story of marriage. -- Diana Gabaldon
The men's attention had shifted to a young man crouched on a stool in the corner. He had barely looked up through my appearance and interrogation, but kept his head bent, hand clutching the opposite shoulder, rocking slightly back and forth in pain. -- Diana Gabaldon
Your son is a drunkard," she informed him. Then she caught a whiff of Roger's breath. "Following in his father's footsteps, I see," she added coldly. -- Diana Gabaldon
Sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man - not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, many and many a time," he whispered. "When I saw you. When I took ye, not caring did ye want me or no, did ye have somewhere else to be, someone else to love. -- Diana Gabaldon
A bit self-conscious. "I used to wear mine long as well. It's short now because the monks had to shave the back of my head and it's had but a few months to grow again." He bent forward at the waist, inviting me -- Diana Gabaldon
Only you," he said, so softly I could barely hear him. "To worship ye with my body, give ye all the service of my hands. To give ye my name, and all my heart and soul with it. Only you. Because ye will not let me lie
and yet ye love me. -- Diana Gabaldon
I found the rooted silence, rushing stream, and rustling leaves balm to the spirit. -- Diana Gabaldon
fortunately it came out as a mere breath of sound. Another body turned over, rustling, -- Diana Gabaldon
Exposure to a two-year-old boy was probably the best possible object lesson in the dangers of motherhood, -- Diana Gabaldon
A file of red-coated soldiers came at the quick-march from the other end of the quay, splitting the crowd like vinegar dropped on mayonnaise. -- Diana Gabaldon
Randall! Of course!" Roger smacked himself on the forehead, and felt his cheeks grow hot at Brianna's giggle. "You're going to think me a complete fool, but I've only just realized who you are. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,
I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.
I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done. -- Diana Gabaldon
I had worn that gold ring for nearly thirty years; token of vows taken, forsaken, renewed, and at last absolved. A token of marriage, of family; of a large part of my life. And the last trace of Frank - whom, in spite of everything, I had loved. Jamie -- Diana Gabaldon
61 ULTIMATUMS Great Alamance Camp May 16th 1771 To the People now Assembled in Arms, who Style themselves Regulators In Answer to your Petition, I am to acquaint you that I have ever been attentive to the true Interest of this Country, and to that of every Individual residing -- Diana Gabaldon
Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes. -- Diana Gabaldon
I didn't say you shouldn't worry, do you think I don't worry? But no, you probably can't do anything about me.' 'Well, maybe no, Sassenach, and maybe so. But I've lived a long enough time now to think it maybe doesna matter so much
so long as I can love you.' -Claire & Jamie Fraser -- Diana Gabaldon
Harmless as a setting dove," he agreed. "I'm too hungry to be a threat to anything but breakfast. Let a stray bannock come within reach, though, and I'll no answer for the consequences. -- Diana Gabaldon
Respectability had its uses. I wondered idly how many spymasters had thought of using elderly ladies? You didn't hear about old women as spies - but then again, that might merely indicate how good they were at it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Something wrong with short men, is there?" Roger inquired. "They tend to turn mean if they don't get their way," Claire answered. "Like small yapping dogs. Cute and fluffy, but cross them and you're likely to get a nasty nip in the ankle. -- Diana Gabaldon
But when I lay wi' Emily - from the first time. I knew. Kent who I was again." He looked up at her then, eyes dark and shadowed by loss. "My soul didna wander while I slept - when I slept wi' her. -- Diana Gabaldon
heads that edged the huge fireplace, and I -- Diana Gabaldon
I felt the tributaries of his veins, wished to enter into his bloodstream, travel there, dissolved and bodiless, to take refuge in the thick walled chambers of his heart. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's only when ye ken ye can say no that it takes courage. -- Diana Gabaldon
One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough. -- Diana Gabaldon
Marrying. Oh, God. Buoyed temporarily by port wine and cream lace, I had momentarily managed to ignore the significance of the occasion. -- Diana Gabaldon
Dinna be afraid. There's the two of us now. -- Diana Gabaldon
If ye were no longer there - or somewhere - " he said very softly, "then the sun would no longer come up or go down." He lifted my hand and kissed it, very gently. He laid it, closed around my ring, upon my chest, rose, and left. -- Diana Gabaldon
She may be a good whore, but she's no hand at cards. -- Diana Gabaldon
Where did you learn to kiss like that?" I said, a little breathless. He grinned and pulled me close again.
"I said I was a virgin, not a monk," he said, kissing me again. "If I find I need guidance, I'll ask. -- Diana Gabaldon
He wanted to laugh; the vision of her pounding that wee boy in a fury of berserk rage, hair flying in the wind and a look of blood in her eye, was one he would treasure. -- Diana Gabaldon
Sassenach," he said against my shoulder, a moment later. "Mm?" "Who in God's name is John Wayne?" "You are," I said. "Go to sleep. -- Diana Gabaldon
I do not understand men." That made him chuckle, deep in his chest. "Yes, ye do, Sassenach. Ye only wish ye didn't. -- Diana Gabaldon
thought much of women; their grace and beauty, blooming like lotus flowers, floating like milkweed on the wind. -- Diana Gabaldon
I could know ye all my life, I think, and always love you. -- Diana Gabaldon
Fiercely to cherish, softly to guard. -- Diana Gabaldon
My God, he thought, I'm going to die before I've been born. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie reached across and took my right hand in his, his fingers linking with mine, and the silver of my ring shone red in the glow of the flames. I looked up into his face and saw the promise spoken in his eyes, as it was in mine.
"As long as we both shall live. -- Diana Gabaldon
You tell me exactly what happened, ye filthy wee pervert," Fraser whispered, his breath hot on Grey's face and smelling of ale. He shook Grey slightly. "Every word. Every motion. Everything." Grey got just enough breath to answer. "No," he said defiantly. "Go ahead and kill me. -- Diana Gabaldon
Double, double toil and trouble," he chanted under his breath. "Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, in the caldron boil and bake. Eye of newt and toe of frog, wool of bat and tongue of dog ... " He couldn't recall what came next and abandoned the -- Diana Gabaldon
I think sometimes the dead cherish us, as we do them, -- Diana Gabaldon
Beans, beans, they're good for your heart," I said cheerily, seizing the opening. "The more you eat, the more you fart. The more you fart, the better you feel - so let's have beans for every meal! -- Diana Gabaldon
We didn't always get on, you know that, but ... yes. We respected each other; that counts for a lot. And we liked each other, in spite of everything. Yes, -- Diana Gabaldon
It ... wasna a scream of fear, or even anger. It ... ehm ... well, it was the way a woman will scream, sometimes, if she's ... pleased." "In bed, you mean." It wasn't a question. "So do men. Sometimes." You idiot! Of all the things you might have said ... -- Diana Gabaldon
I'll leave it to you, Sassenach," he said dryly, "to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's a terrible thing, to think it might be me that would be the threat, that I could kill you with my love-but it's true. -- Diana Gabaldon
It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch. -- Diana Gabaldon
Home is the place where they have to take you in -- Diana Gabaldon
He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances. -- Diana Gabaldon
Means of dealing with the Three Furies before they drove her crazy or assassinated each other with rolling pin or knitting needle. -- Diana Gabaldon
elbow. I had been without sleep for most of the last three days, -- Diana Gabaldon
Mo Nighean donn," he whispered," mo chridhe. My brown lass, my heart."
Come to me. Cover me. Shelter me. a bhean, heal me. Burn with me, as I burn for you. -- Diana Gabaldon
He cupped his heavy balls in one hand, the thumb moving up and down his exigent member in a slow and thoughtful manner. "On your knees, a nighean," he said softly. "Now. -- Diana Gabaldon
The body is amazingly plastic. The spirit, even more so. But there are some things you don't come back from. Say ye so, a nighean? True, the body's easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled - yet there's that in a man that is never destroyed. -- Diana Gabaldon
Come to bed, a nighean. Nothing hurts when ye love me. He was right; nothing did. -- Diana Gabaldon
There's nay shame to ha' fallen in battle, mo caraidh," he said softly. "The greatest of warriors may be overcome. -- Diana Gabaldon
As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ah?" he said, vaguely. "No, I dinna think so. Still," he said with a smile, pulling his attention suddenly back to her, "I wouldna be likely to. A young burke of sixteen's too taken up wi' his own grand self to pay much heed to what he thinks are naught but a rabble of snot-nosed bairns. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's strange," he said, "when he was alive, I didna pay him much heed. But once he was dead, the things he'd told me had a good deal more influence. -- Diana Gabaldon
It was possible to leave things behind - places, people, memories - at least for a time. But places held tight to the things that had happened in them, and to come again to a place you had once lived was to be brought face-to-face with what you had done there and who you had been. -- Diana Gabaldon
Damn right I begrudge! I grudge every memory of yours that doesna hold me, and every tear ye've shed for another, and every second you've spent in another man's bed! -- Diana Gabaldon
I baptize thee, Germain Alexander Claudel MacKenzie Fraser, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, Amen. -- Diana Gabaldon
Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good. -- Diana Gabaldon
Once you've chosen a man, don't try to change him', I wrote with more confidence. 'It can't be done. More important-don't let him try to change you. -- Diana Gabaldon
Unspecified." I was amused. "So you have the proverbial horse thief in your -- Diana Gabaldon
For the moment, everything had disappeared: the church, the battle, the screams and shouts and the rumble of limber wheels along the rutted road through Freehold. There wasn't anything but her and him, and he opened his eyes to look on her face, to fix it in his mind forever. -- Diana Gabaldon
Lavender and rosemary should be cut in the morning, though, when the volatile oils had risen with the sun; it wasn't as potent if taken later in the day. -- Diana Gabaldon
In body or soul, somewhere he struck a spark, and an answering fury of passion and need sprang from the ashes of surrender. -- Diana Gabaldon
If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait. -- Diana Gabaldon
He wished to cover her with his body, possess her-for if he could do that, he could pretend to himself that she was safe. Covering her so ... he might protect her. Or so he felt, even knowing how senseless the feeling was. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye mind me o' your uncle Dougal, a sionnach," she said, tilting her head to one side coquettishly. "He was older when I met him than you are now, but you've the look of him about ye, aye? Like ye'd take what ye pleased and damn anyone who stands in your way." Jamie -- Diana Gabaldon
I work on multiple projects at a time because it keeps me from getting writer's block. -- Diana Gabaldon
Quite without thought, he glanced at his left hand, and saw the ghost of the scar at the base of his thumb, the "C" so faded that it was scarcely visible. He had not noticed it or thought of it in years, and felt suddenly as though there was not air enough to breathe. -- Diana Gabaldon
I wondered what sort of man - or woman, perhaps? - had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, well. There's a dance in the States, called the Shag. I gather I shouldn't ask you to do it with me here, though." "Not unless you mean it, -- Diana Gabaldon
Nice clothes are all very well, but if gossip and scheming and worry and silly parties and tiny rules of etiquette go with them ... no. I'd as soon live in my shift and say what I like. -- Diana Gabaldon
He laughed. "Yeah, all right, I see," she said. "Mmm. Why did you have to mention tomatoes? I used the last of the dried ones last week, and -- Diana Gabaldon
A man who had never spoken love to me, who had never needed to, for I knew he loved me, as surely as I knew I lived. For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well, legends are many-legged beasties, aye? But they generally have at least one foot on the truth. -- Diana Gabaldon
she keeps takin' me in - so I suppose she must be home. -- Diana Gabaldon
Is it usual, what it is between us when I touch you? -- Diana Gabaldon
Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world - because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that's all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can't help, but only to do what you can. -- Diana Gabaldon
Women are never too old to wear pink," Fergus replied firmly. "I have heard les mesdames say so, many times. -- Diana Gabaldon
if ye bed wi' a vixen, ye must expect to get bit. -- Diana Gabaldon
Who you jiving, L.J.? I heard Joe Abernathy's voice say, derisive and affectionate. I -- Diana Gabaldon
So now it's space and time," he said. "You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?"
"All the time," she said dryly, "on the BBC. And don't think I wouldn't sell my soul for a TARDIS. -- Diana Gabaldon
friend's face that something terrible had happened. The fact that he was seeing Jamie Fraser's face at all was evidence enough of that, never mind the look of the man. -- Diana Gabaldon
That's the best thing I can think of. Having a good hold on your arse always makes me feel steady. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jaime, you must be half-dead"
He laughed tiredly, holding me close with one large warm hand on the small of my back.
"A lot more than half, Sassenach. I'm knackered, and my cock's the only thing too stupid to know it. I canna lie wi' ye without wanting you, but wanting's all I'm like to do. -- Diana Gabaldon
He [Brian Fraser] told me that a man must be responsible for any see he sows, for it's his duty to take care of a woman and protect her. And if I wasna prepared to do that, then I'd no right to burden a woman with the consequences of my own actions. -- Diana Gabaldon
His Grace woke up in the morning red-eyed as a ferret and in roughly the same temper as a rabid badger. Had I a tranquilizing dart, I would have shot him with it without an instant's hesitation. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment? -- Diana Gabaldon
Don't be afraid. There's the two of us now. -- Diana Gabaldon
That's for calling your father a fool. It may be true, but it's disrespectful. Brian Fraser to teenage Jamie -- Diana Gabaldon
It's true!" She whirled toward Jamie, fists clenched against the cloak she still wore. "It's true! It's the Sassenach witch! How could ye do such a thing to me, Jamie Fraser? -- Diana Gabaldon
That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess. Jamie Fraser -- Diana Gabaldon
So you've not only somehow married Fraser's wife, but you've accidentally been raising his illegitimate son for the last fifteen years? -- Diana Gabaldon
I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem. -- Diana Gabaldon
You'd forgive me for Claire - but not for killing your ... men. He glanced at the two Craddocks, spotty as a pair of raisin puddings and - Grey's look implied - likely no brighter. -- Diana Gabaldon
That's not precisely what I had in mind.
Jamie, I had found out by accident a few days previously, had never mastered the art of winking one eye. Instead, he blinked solemnly, like a large red owl. -- Diana Gabaldon
The position of sun and moon on the Feast of Beltane is one, with a list if two hundred paired figures laid out beneath. Similar tables existed for Hogmanay and Midsummer's Day, and Samhainn, the Feast of All Hallows. The ancient feasts of fire and sun, and Beltane's sun would rise tomorrow. -- Diana Gabaldon
23 RETURN TO LEOCH -- Diana Gabaldon
Not a hothouse flower, this daughter of Leoch, despite her surroundings. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye werena the first lass I kissed," he said softly. "But I swear you'll be the last. -- Diana Gabaldon
There aren't many people like that - who will tell you the truth about themselves and anything else right out. I've only met three people like that, I think - four now," she said, her smile widening to warm him. "There was -- Diana Gabaldon
How to tell her in words, then, what he had learned himself by pain and grace? That only by forgiveness could she forget - and that forgiveness was not a single act, but a matter of constant practice. Perhaps -- Diana Gabaldon
My father liked me, when I wasna being an idiot. And he loved me, too
enough to beat the daylights out of me when I was being an idiot. Jamie Fraser -- Diana Gabaldon
If needs must, she could do those things for herself-or find another man. And yet...she needed him-would mourn his loss if it came. Perhaps forever. In his present vulnerable mood, that knowledge seemed a great gift. -- Diana Gabaldon
Stones of protection; amethyst, emerald, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and a male ruby. -- Diana Gabaldon
Red-heeled shoes and silk stockings clocked in black. Gray satin breeches with silver knee buckles. Snowy linen, with Brussels lace six inches deep at cuff and jabot. The coat, a masterpiece in heavy gray with blue satin cuffs and crested silver buttons, hung behind the door, awaiting its turn. -- Diana Gabaldon
box with me, so there was little I could -- Diana Gabaldon
He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well, that's the hell of it, isn't it?" she said, turning away. "You never know, but you have to act anyway, don't you? -- Diana Gabaldon
His hairline. Luckily, the arrival of the salmagundi -- Diana Gabaldon
Good luck, Jamie," he said, voice a little husky. "God go with you. -- Diana Gabaldon
With vivid memories of the last IRS form I had signed, I agreed sympathetically that a two percent tax rate was a positive outrage, wondering to myself just what had become of the fiery spirit of American taxpayers over the intervening two hundred years. -- Diana Gabaldon
All I want, is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you - just because I am. -- Diana Gabaldon
I understood very well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that doing so will keep it from departing. -- Diana Gabaldon
thought to tell me before departing, -- Diana Gabaldon
onto the fabric of her shift; I reached out one-handed and tweaked the cloth up to cover her. She put a hand over her breast and pressed hard to stop the milk. "What does he mean to do, though? If he finds him. -- Diana Gabaldon
You are beautiful," he whispered to me. "If you say so." "Do ye not believe me? Have I ever lied to you?" "That's not what I mean. I mean - if you say it, then it's true. You make it true. -- Diana Gabaldon
Nothing is lost ... only changed. -- Diana Gabaldon
After all, I thought, what were days and weeks in the presence of eternity? -- Diana Gabaldon
A Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases, -- Diana Gabaldon
I took an especially deep breath, smell notwithstanding, exhaled, and shut my eyes with decision. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. That had been one of Frank's favorite expressions, and by and large, a good sentiment. -- Diana Gabaldon
When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang. -- Diana Gabaldon
I had seen even well-established marriages shatter under the strain of smaller things. And those that did not shatter, but were crippled by mistrust -- Diana Gabaldon
I am, madam, Jonathan Randall, Esquire, Captain of His Majesty's Eighth Dragoons. At your service, madam. -- Diana Gabaldon
ONE DAY, COCK OF THE WALK - NEXT DAY, A FEATHER DUSTER -- Diana Gabaldon
For I had come back, and I dreamed once more in the cool air of the Highlands. And the voice of my dream still echoed through ears and heart, repeated with the sound of Brianna's sleeping breath. "You are mine," it had said. "Mine. And I will not let you go. -- Diana Gabaldon
Did that mean she had not cared deeply for any of her husbands? I wondered. Or only that she was a woman of great strength, capable of overcoming grief, not once, but over and over again? -- Diana Gabaldon
God, don't laugh!" Jamie said, alarmed. "I didna mean to make ye laugh! Christ, Jenny will kill me if ye cough up a lung and die out here! -- Diana Gabaldon
This is the thin time, when the beloved dead draw near. The world turns inward, and the chilling air grows thick with dreams and mystery. -- Diana Gabaldon
we might as well be afloat as earthbound, the heave and fall beneath me the rise of planking, and the sound of the pines the wind in our sails. -- Diana Gabaldon
Is it true - that I won't forget?" He paused for a moment, hand on her hair. "Aye, that's true," he said softly. "But it's true, too, that it willna matter after a time. -- Diana Gabaldon
In my arrogance I had omitted to make proper sacrifice - for -- Diana Gabaldon
Date of our first anniversary, Jamie had been in the Bastille, and I ... I had been in -- Diana Gabaldon
Incongruous that he laughed. And then realized that there -- Diana Gabaldon
The big white house glowed on the hill above them, tranquil in the afternoon light, the big red spruce behind it a looming but benign presence; not for the first time, he felt that the tree was somehow guarding the house - and in his present fragile mental state, found that notion a comfort. -- Diana Gabaldon
There is an oath upon her," he said to Arch, and I realized dimly that he was still speaking in Gaelic, though I understood him clearly. "She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her. -- Diana Gabaldon
With no Law to regulate their Behavior save Self-interest, though, plainly there is Nothing to prevent an irregular Militia from becoming more of a Threat to the Citizenry than the Dangers from which it offers to preserve them. -- Diana Gabaldon
What I was born does not matter, only what I will make of myself, only what I will become. -- Diana Gabaldon
Flames ... sprouting in the thatch like the tongues of the Holy Ghost, while the fire within roared its prayers for the damned. -- Diana Gabaldon
Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It's what happens when you live through things you shouldn't have been able to live through and can't reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did. -- Diana Gabaldon
As usual in such matters, God's sense of humor trumped all imagination. -- Diana Gabaldon
Nay, he needs a woman, not a girl. And Laoghaire will be a girl when she's fifty. -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye've no idea how lovely ye look, stark naked, wi' the sun behind you. All gold, like ye were dipped in it. -- Diana Gabaldon
And here I thought I married you because ye had a fair face and a fine fat arse. To think you've a brain as well! -- Diana Gabaldon
Flies round a honeypot would be nothin' to it, lad! Penniless and nameless as ye are now, the lasses still sigh after ye - I've seen 'em!" More snorting. "Even this Sassenach wench can no keep away from ye, and her a new widow! -- Diana Gabaldon
I'll scream!"
"Likely. If not before, certainly during. I expect they'll hear ye at the next farm; you've got good lungs. -- Diana Gabaldon
So ye've come back to him," he said happily. "God, that's romantic! -- Diana Gabaldon
Does it ever stop? The wanting you?" "Even when I've just left ye. I want you so much my chest feels tight and my fingers ache with wanting to touch ye again. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie, my dearie," his sister said sweetly. "D'ye -- Diana Gabaldon
We have nothing now between us, save - respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies. -- Diana Gabaldon
You - shoot him, can't you?" Jamie shrugged and, lifting the rifle to -- Diana Gabaldon
We camped for the night in a hollow near a good-sized creek - one big enough for trout. Jamie and Ian waded into this with enthusiasm, harrying the finny denizens with whippy rods cut from black willow. -- Diana Gabaldon
Do you know where Laoghaire is? -- Diana Gabaldon
Then let amorous kisses dwell On our lips, begin and tell A Thousand and a Hundred score A Hundred, and a Thousand more. -- Diana Gabaldon
You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element - be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point - and say why it's there. -- Diana Gabaldon
A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking. -- Diana Gabaldon
My dear daughter,
As you will see if ever you receive this, we are alive. . . . -- Diana Gabaldon
Though the Congress will have to approve your appointment," Washington went on, frowning a little, "and there's no guarantee as to what those contentious, shopkeeping sons of bitches will do. -- Diana Gabaldon
Could I but lay my head in your lap, lass. Feel your hand on me, and sleep wi' the scent of you in my bed.
Christ, Sassenach. I need ye. -- Diana Gabaldon
Next time I marry someone, I'll pick a lass who wakes up cheerful in the morning, -- Diana Gabaldon
Ian - is that by chance Ian Murray?" Grey asked, but then answered himself. "I suppose it must be; how many Mohawks can there be named Ian? -- Diana Gabaldon
Turned me away from him and fitted himself to my back so we lay nested together. -- Diana Gabaldon
He turned his head to look full at me, his hair fire-struck with the setting sun, face dark in silhouette. "Twenty-four years ago today, I married ye, Sassenach," he said softly. "I hope ye willna have cause yet to regret it." -Jamie Fraser -- Diana Gabaldon
I don't know. She said you're born with the lines of your hand - with a life - but then the lines change, with the things you do, and the person you are. -- Diana Gabaldon
Women giving birth seemed very often to lose any sense of fear or misgiving ... exhibiting an absorption that amounted to indifference-simply because they had no attention to spare for anything beyond the universe bounded by their bellies. -- Diana Gabaldon
There aren't any answers, only choices -- Diana Gabaldon
Would he ever come back? He wondered. The water filled his ears with its own rush, and he was comforted by the realization that, in fact, he never left. -- Diana Gabaldon
To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live. -- Diana Gabaldon
Arisaid. A night breeze brushed a strand of hair across my face. -- Diana Gabaldon
The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy -- Diana Gabaldon
I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love. -- Diana Gabaldon
I've yet to see the auld woman believes in witches, nor the young one, neither. It's men think there must be ill-wishes and magic in women, -- Diana Gabaldon
What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos. -- Diana Gabaldon
Mama says the Beardsleys follow her around like dogs, but they don't. They follow her like tame wolves.
I thought Ian said it wasn't possible to tame wolves.
It isn't. -- Diana Gabaldon
Can I decline a nymph so divine? Her voice like a flute is dulcis; Her oculus bright, her manus white And soft, when I tacto, her pulse is. O how bella, my puella I'll kiss in secula seculorum; If I've luck, sir, she's my uxor, O dies benedictorum. -- Diana Gabaldon
It doesna matter how many things ye do on a farm, there's always more than ye can do. A wonder the place doesna rise up about my ears and swallow me, like Jonah and the whale. -- Diana Gabaldon
Aye, I believe ye, Sassenach. But it would ha' been a good deal easier if you'd only been a witch. -- Diana Gabaldon
Forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice -- Diana Gabaldon
I have been in perturbation of mind for days, debating whether I shall write it, and now, having written, whether to send it. -- Diana Gabaldon
I thought perhaps I'd start on this project with a trip down to Broch Tuarach. It's in the same direction as the stone circle, so maybe -- Diana Gabaldon
Quite without warning, I began to cry. No sobbing, no throat-gripping spasms. Water simply welled in my eyes and flowed down my cheeks, slow as cold honey. A quiet acknowledgment of despair as things spiraled slowly out of control. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's not too late, you know," she said. She smiled, teasing a little tremulously. "You could still back out." "It's been too late for me since the day I saw you," he said gruffly. -- Diana Gabaldon
To dry the damp hem, and the firelight glowed from both my rings. A strong disposition to -- Diana Gabaldon
A man should pay tribute to your body," he said softly... "For you are beautiful, and that is your right. -- Diana Gabaldon
Deftly whipping a small tuning fork from his pocket, he struck it smartly against a pillar and held it next to Jamie's left ear. Jamie rolled his eyes heavenward, but shrugged and obligingly sang a note. The little man jerked back as though he'd been shot. -- Diana Gabaldon
These were people like that. The ones that cared so terribly much - enough to risk everything, enough to change and do things. Most people aren't like that, you know. It isn't that they don't care, but they don't care so greatly. -- Diana Gabaldon
THE MAN IN THE WOOD -- Diana Gabaldon
There was a smell about the place, which I imagined as the smell of misery and fear, though I supposed it was no more than the niff of ancient squalor and an absence of drains. -- Diana Gabaldon
He was pressing himself against the wall as though trying to get through it by osmosis. -- Diana Gabaldon
I wouldna cross the road to see a scrawny woman if she was stark naked and dripping wet. ~Jamie Fraser -- Diana Gabaldon
Her entrance was greeted by a general outcry of cordiality that made her mildly ashamed of her cynicism. -- Diana Gabaldon
Do you really think we'll ever
"
"I do," he said with certainty, not letting me finish. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "I know it, Sassenach, and so do you. You were meant to be a mother, and I surely dinna intend to let anyone else father your children. -- Diana Gabaldon
conscience as her lover. Her husband. -- Diana Gabaldon
rubbing the ointment into the creases of his knuckles, massaging -- Diana Gabaldon
Luceo Non Uro. 'I shine, not burn, -- Diana Gabaldon
Lord that she might be safe. She and my children. -- Diana Gabaldon
OUTLANDER A Delta Book PUBLISHING HISTORY Delacorte Press hardcover edition published 1991 Delta trade paperback edition/July 2001 Published by Bantam Dell A Division of Random House, Inc. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like," he said, "but God made hope. The stars willna burn out." He turned and, cupping my chin, kissed me gently. "And nor will we. -- Diana Gabaldon
Robbie," Jamie assured him. "What's to do, then?" McGillivray, who -- Diana Gabaldon
Jemmy won't get to go to Disneyland - but he'll have that. A family that laughs - and millions of little lights in the trees. -- Diana Gabaldon
To fight disease without medicine is to push against a shadow; a darkness that spreads as inexorably as night. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, what a tangled web we weave,' " I intoned, " 'when first we practice to deceive.' -- Diana Gabaldon
Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades. -- Diana Gabaldon
My kinsfolk have failed, and my familiar friends have forgotten me. -- Diana Gabaldon
I said 'Lord, if I've never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay. -- Diana Gabaldon
No, sir. Now that his lordship is here, though, we can proceed. I'll tell Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart; he's to chair the proceeding. -- Diana Gabaldon
He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made. -- Diana Gabaldon
I am a coward, damn you! I couldna tell ye, for fear ye would leave me, and unmanly thing that I am, I thought I couldna bear that! -- Diana Gabaldon
Life among academics had taught me that a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact, so far as professional advancement goes. -- Diana Gabaldon
Stop it! It's too big! Take it out! -- Diana Gabaldon
It looks as though it hurt."
"It did."
"Did you cry?"
His fists clenched involuntarily at his sides. "Yes!"
Jenny walked back around to face him, pointed chin lifted and slanted eyes wide and bright. "So did I," she said softly. "Every day since they took ye away. -- Diana Gabaldon
You can't make a horse do anything. You see what he's going to do and then you tell him to do that, and he thinks it's your idea, so next time you tell him something, he's more likely to do what you tell him. -- Diana Gabaldon
There are only two people in this world to whom I would never lie, Sassenach," he said softly. "Ye're one of them. And I'm the other. -- Diana Gabaldon
He looked like Bree, didn't he? He was like her?" "Yes." He breathed heavily, almost a snort. "I could see it in your face - when you'd look at her, I could see you thinking of him. Damn you, Claire Beauchamp," he said, very softly. -- Diana Gabaldon
I asked. I was quiet then, letting him come to terms with it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers. -- Diana Gabaldon
I love you," he murmured. "Oh, Bree, I do love you." She didn't answer, but a hand floated up from the dark and lay along his cheek, gentle as a tendril of seaweed. She kept it there while he took her, laid open in trust, while her other hand held his beating heart. -- Diana Gabaldon
This is why you use imagery when writing about sex; it's a means both of evoking immediacy and of distilling emotion. -- Diana Gabaldon
I have ... an understanding. In England. His understanding with James Fraser was that if he were ever to lay a hand on the man or speak his heart, Fraser would break his neck instantly. It was, however, certainly an understanding, and clear as Waterford crystal. -- Diana Gabaldon
If," I said through my teeth, "you ever raise a hand to me again, James Fraser, I'll cut out your heart and fry it for breakfast! -- Diana Gabaldon
Ye think of me, Jamie, and Jenny and Lallybroch. Ye'll not see us, but we'll be here nonetheless and thinking of you. Look up at night, and see the stars, and ken we see them, too." He -- Diana Gabaldon
What I wonder about the dreams is - all the new inventions people think up - how many of those things are made by people like me - like us? How many "inventions" are really memories, of the things we once knew? And - how many of us are there? -- Diana Gabaldon
He lounged in the corner like a crouching cat, watching me through eyes narrowed against the sun. -- Diana Gabaldon
Don't let characters talk pointlessly - they only talk if there's something to say. -- Diana Gabaldon
An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time -- Diana Gabaldon
The light faded slowly, retreating through the trees. The thick mossy trunks grew dense with shadow, edges still rimmed with a fugitive light that hid among the leaves, green shadows shifting with the sunset breeze. -- Diana Gabaldon
There's no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands. -- Diana Gabaldon
Yes, Madame. The Jews of Frankfort are not allowed to use family names." He looked up and smiled lopsidedly. "For the sake of convenience, the neighbors call us after an old red shield that was painted on the front of our house, many years ago. But beyond that ... no, Madame. We have no name. -- Diana Gabaldon
Relatively few who could be described as a Red-haired dejenerate Pox-ridden Usuring Son of a Bitch who skulks in Brothels when not drunk and comitting Riot in the Street, I imagine. -- Diana Gabaldon
Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?" He hesitated a moment before answering.
"Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am." He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door.
"Reckon one of us should know what they're doing. -- Diana Gabaldon
For God's sake, be careful, Sassenach!" he muttered. "Dinna go near those things! -- Diana Gabaldon
So now thee has doomed thy kinsman, repudiated thy father, and caused me to betray my principles. What next?!" "Oh, bloody hell," he said, and grabbed her arms, pulled her roughly to him, and kissed her. He let go and stepped back quickly, leaving her bug-eyed and gasping. The -- Diana Gabaldon
It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance. -- Diana Gabaldon
Not loneliness, but solitude. Not suffering, but endurance, the discovery of grim kinship with the rocks and sky. And the finding here of a harsh peace that would transcend bodily discomfort, a healing instead of the wounds of the soul. -- Diana Gabaldon
The sins of the fathers," I murmured to myself. "The sins of the fathers shall not be visited upon the children. -- Diana Gabaldon
His head bowed and his lips fastened softly on my nipple. I groaned, feeling the half-painful prickle of the milk rushing through the tiny ducts. I put a hand behind his head, and pressed him slightly closer. "Harder," I whispered. -- Diana Gabaldon
The shadows of the tombstones in the graveyard stretched out long and violet, and the sound of the flies buzzed in my ears, louder than the ringing of the shots that still came - were coming closer - to the frail barrier of the dead. -- Diana Gabaldon
Help us, O Lord, to remember how often men do wrong through want of thought, rather than from lack of love; and how cunning are the snares that trip our feet. -- Diana Gabaldon
And I don't recommend murder as a way of settling difficult situations. It tends to lead to complications - but not nearly as many as marriage. -- Diana Gabaldon
sorrow and despair. All too many -- Diana Gabaldon
We will marry each other. -- Diana Gabaldon
So long as my body lives, and yours
we are one flesh," he whispered, "And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire
I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you. -- Diana Gabaldon
Here and there, a form stirred feebly, victim of war's sorcery, struggling against the enchantment of death. -- Diana Gabaldon
I canna think why the good Lord should waste hair like that on a man. -- Diana Gabaldon
The kiss was brief and gentle, scarcely more than the formality that concludes a wedding, yet as striking in its impact as though they had this minute plighted a troth. -- Diana Gabaldon
A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination. -- Diana Gabaldon
Aye, well," Murray replied, "but think. Say a man is a coward and hasna died well. Purgatory gives him a chance to prove his courage after all, no? And once he is proved a proper man, then the bridge is open to him, and he can pass through the clouds of terrible things unhindered to paradise. -- Diana Gabaldon
When had the right to live as one wished ever been considered trivial? -- Diana Gabaldon
Owls are keepers of the dead, but not just the dead. They're messengers between worlds. -- Diana Gabaldon
You didn't say there was a stone circle, I said. I felt faint, and not only from the heat and damp. -- Diana Gabaldon
I regarded him gently over my own bowl of stew. He was very large, solid, and beautifully formed. And if he was a bit battered by circumstance, that merely added to his charm.
"You're a very hard person to kill, I think," I said. "That's a great comfort to me. -- Diana Gabaldon
I was hopeful of his answer, or fearful of it. The answer was a slight shrug. -- Diana Gabaldon
came a day when the food -- Diana Gabaldon
If it was killing-and it was- then I thought it not murder, but a justifiable homicide, undertaken in desperate self defense. -- Diana Gabaldon
She lifted the small stack of books from their wrappings, stroking the soft leather cover of the top one with a forefinger that trembled with delight. Jenny loved books with the same passion her brother reserved for horses. -- Diana Gabaldon
Solitude was in its own way a balm for loneliness. -- Diana Gabaldon
James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser, I said, spacing the words, formally, the way Jamie had spoken them to me when he first told me his full name on the day of our wedding. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, foisted, is it?" cried Mr. Ormiston in righteous indignation. "Such a word! And if it means what I think it does, young man, you should get down on your knees and thank God for such foistingness! -- Diana Gabaldon
I think perhaps the greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help." "Not in having no one for whom to care?" Fraser paused before answering; he might have been weighing the position of the pieces on the table. "That is emptiness," he said at last, softly. "But no great burden -- Diana Gabaldon
As yet too hungry and too clumsy for tenderness, still he made love with a sort of unflagging joy that made me think that male virginity might be a highly underrated commodity. -- Diana Gabaldon
The first evening in an inn, though, I had remained awake for a good half-hour, fascinated by the remarkable variety of noises the male respiratory apparatus could produce. An entire dormitory full of student nurses couldn't come close. -- Diana Gabaldon
It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it. -- Diana Gabaldon
It's the anonymity of the war that makes the killing possible. When the nameless dead are named again on tombstone and on cenotaph, then they regain the identity they lost as soldiers, and take their place in grief and memory, the ghosts of sons and lovers. -- Diana Gabaldon
Do you know how rare such a thing is?" he asked quietly. "That peculiar sort of mutual passion?" The one-sided kind was common enough. -- Diana Gabaldon
I was convinced by now that his feelings for Laoghaire were only those of a chivalrous friendship, but I didn't know what he might do if he knew that his uncle had seduced the girl and got her with child. -- Diana Gabaldon
Also was remembering the baronet who might have been his father. He reached -- Diana Gabaldon
If ye loved him, he must ha' been a good man.'
'Yes, he ... was.'
'Then I shall do my best to honor his spirit by serving his wife. -- Diana Gabaldon
Balefully at his figures, rumpling a hand through his -- Diana Gabaldon
But do ye not see how verra small a thing is the notion of death, between us two, Claire?" he whispered. -- Diana Gabaldon
You're mine, damn ye, Claire Fraser! Mine, and I wilna share ye, with a man or a memory, or anything whatever, so long as both shall live. -- Diana Gabaldon
I, ah, I wasn't expecting - " I said idiotically. Brianna gave me a grin to match her father's, eyes bright as stars and damp with happiness. "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" "What?" said Jamie blankly. -- Diana Gabaldon
She was a very old lady indeed, or at least she looked it. She leaned on a hawthorn stick, enveloped in garments she must have -- Diana Gabaldon
This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her?
She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Why, what's the matter wi' the poor child?" she demanded of Jamie. "Has she had an accident o' some sort?"
"No, it's only she's married me," he said, "though if ye care to call it an accident, ye may. -- Diana Gabaldon
If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Damn Frank!" he said ferociously. "Damn all Randalls! Damn Jack Randall, and damn Mary Hawkins Randall, and damn Alex Randall - er, God rest his soul, I mean," he amended hastily, crossing himself. -- Diana Gabaldon
Come on!" he said, grunting as he shifted the Chinaman's slippery form for a better grip. "They'll be after us any moment! -- Diana Gabaldon
Through eons of living in a land so poor there was little to eat but oats, they had as usual converted necessity into a virtue, and insisted that they liked the stuff. -- Diana Gabaldon
Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." "That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. "No," he said. "That's faith. -- Diana Gabaldon
Blessed are those who eat greens, for they shall keep their teeth. Blessed are those who wash their hands after wiping their arses, for they shall not sicken. Blessed are those who boil water, for they shall be called saviors of mankind. -- Diana Gabaldon
:Go to hell, Jamie," I said at last, wiping my eyes. "Go directly to hell. Do not pass Go. Do not collect two hundred dollars. There. Do you feel better now? -- Diana Gabaldon
Yes," I said. "Before ... it's all possibility. It might be a son, or a daughter. A plain child, a bonny one. And then it's born, and all the things it might have been are gone, because now it is." She -- Diana Gabaldon
Do ye not understand?"he said, in near desparation. "I would lay the world at your feet, Claire-and I have nothing to give ye!"
He honestly thought it mattered. -- Diana Gabaldon
And suddenly it was all simple. He held out his arms to her. She stepped into them and found that she had been wrong; he was as big as she'd imagined - and his arms were as strong about her as she had ever dared to hope. -- Diana Gabaldon
Dorothea is a Grey," he pointed out. "Any member of her family would pause on the gallows to exchange witty banter with the hangman before graciously putting the noose about his neck with his own hands. -- Diana Gabaldon
Would it be better if I'd had daughters?" she asked the mirror, in apparent earnestness.
"No," she answered herself. "They'd only marry men, and there you are. -- Diana Gabaldon
Had no notion how much resemblance there was between what he was doing, and the original beliefs of the Iroquois, -- Diana Gabaldon
Superstition and sensation are always so much more appealing than truth and rationality. The -- Diana Gabaldon
conversation turned ineluctably toward -- Diana Gabaldon
The greylag mate for life? If ye kill a grown goose, hunting, ye must always wait, for the mate will come to mourn. Then ye must try to kill the second, too, for otherwise it will grieve itself to death, calling through the skies for the lost one. -- Diana Gabaldon
The Continental army got more generals than they got private soldiers, these days. An officer lives through more 'n two battles, they make him some kind of general on the spot. Now, gettin' any pay for it, that's a different kettle of fish. -- Diana Gabaldon
got up. She couldn't lie in bed mourning what was lost; it was no -- Diana Gabaldon
He wiped the sweat from his face on his sleeve, squared his shoulders, and strode back into the fray. All there was to do was his duty. -- Diana Gabaldon
No, the fault lies with the artists," Claire went on. "The writers, the singers, the tellers of tales. It's them that take the past and re-create it to their liking. Them that could take a fool and give you back a hero, take a sot and make him a king. -- Diana Gabaldon
Brianna?" he said, frowning at the pictures. "What an awful name for a wee lassie! -- Diana Gabaldon
I stood in front of him in nothing but my shoes and gartered rose-silk stockings. -- Diana Gabaldon
But for the hours of the night, I was helpless; powerless to move as a dragonfly in amber. -- Diana Gabaldon
I felt rather like the new moon: the shadow of pain and death was still clearly visible to me - but only because the light was there to throw it into perspective. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jamie ... I only want to be where you are. Nothing else. -- Diana Gabaldon
It doesn't matter what happens; no matter where a child goes - how far or how long. Even if it's forever. You never lose them. -- Diana Gabaldon
Have you anything to say to me now, Madam?" he demanded. "Your wig is crooked," I said, and closed my eyes again. -- Diana Gabaldon
Yes, but - " I began. "So" - he said authoritatively, holding up a finger to hush me - "if you have been deprived of your earlier life, perhaps it is only that God has seen fit to bless you with another, that may be richer and fuller. -- Diana Gabaldon
Was slipping, and his face had gone as white as my own. He looked down again, avoiding my stricken gaze. "I suppose all I was wondering," he murmured, "was ... was he ... was he different from me?" I saw him bite his lip as though wishing the words unsaid, but it was far too late -- Diana Gabaldon
Sassenach. He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection. -- Diana Gabaldon
Advice? You're too old to be given it and too young to take it. -- Diana Gabaldon
Frenchman wouldn't seem so dangerous to them. Perhaps. He blinked hard to clear his vision, and was opening his mouth -- Diana Gabaldon
Sometimes our best action result in things that are most regrettable. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, yes," I said. "My favorite was one I picked up from a Yank. Man named Williamson, from New York, I believe. He said it every time I changed his dressing." "What was it?" " 'Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,' " I said, and dropped the sugar -- Diana Gabaldon
I would have liked to know what Emily Post had to recommend in a situation like this, but as Miss Post wasn't present, I was forced to improvise. -- Diana Gabaldon
If you don't," she said sweetly, "I'll tell my father you made improper advances to me. He'll have the skin flayed off your back. -- Diana Gabaldon
Some were in Gaelic and some in English, used apparently according to which language best fitted the rhythm of the words, for all of them had a beauty to the speaking, beyond the content of the tale itself. -- Diana Gabaldon
Tell him I hate him to his guts and the marrow of his bones! -- Diana Gabaldon
It took a bit more argument, but at last she consented, -- Diana Gabaldon
And so he began haltingly to speak - in Gaelic, as it was the only tongue that didn't seem to require any effort. He understood that he was to speak of what filled his heart, and so began with Scotland - and Culloden. Of grief. Of loss. Of fear. -- Diana Gabaldon
No man is really at his best with someone else's hand up his arse. -- Diana Gabaldon
The past is gone-the future is not come. And we are here together, you and I. -- Diana Gabaldon
Well, and he supposed a duel with a drunken midget was as good a test as any. -- Diana Gabaldon
You have lost your mind,"Jamie said coldly, the shock receding slightly. "Or I should think you had, if ye had one to lose. -- Diana Gabaldon
Time makes very little difference to the basic realities of life -- Diana Gabaldon
Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim place within, where there was nothing but an aching grey blankness ... -- Diana Gabaldon
Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered, "And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret. -- Diana Gabaldon
Blood of my blood, bone of my bone ... ' " "I give ye my body, that we may be one, -- Diana Gabaldon
I kissed his cheek, damp and salty. I could feel his heart beating against my ribs, and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever, not moving, not making love, just breathing the same air. -- Diana Gabaldon
Claire knew the flavor of solitude. It was cold as spring water, and not all could drink it; for some it was not refreshment, but mortal chill. -- Diana Gabaldon
Met with you." "Captain Randall said you were stealing cattle, -- Diana Gabaldon
He was not afraid to die with her, by fire or any other way - only to live without her. -- Diana Gabaldon
I felt simultaneously wonderful and wretched, and didn't know from moment to moment which feeling was uppermost. -- Diana Gabaldon
Black Jack. A common name for rogues and scoundrels in the eighteenth century. A staple of romantic fiction, the name conjured up charming highwaymen, dashing blades in plumed hats. The reality waled at my side. -- Diana Gabaldon
respect for your elders was one of the cornerstones of civilized behavior, -- Diana Gabaldon
It's always better if they see. Then they don't imagine things. So I didn't imagine, I remembered. -- Diana Gabaldon
Oh, Claire, ye do break my heart wi' loving you. -- Diana Gabaldon
You're beautiful to me, Jamie," I said softly, at last. "So beautiful, you break my heart. -- Diana Gabaldon
Jesus H. Christ!" I exclaimed. I felt it again, unbelieving, but there it was. "You always said your head was solid bone, and I'll be damned if you weren't right. She shot you point-blank, and the bloody ball bounced off your skull!" Jamie, -- Diana Gabaldon
Don't cry, Sassenach, he said, so softly I could barely hear him. -- Diana Gabaldon
I always wake when you do, Sassenach; I sleep ill without ye by my side. -- Diana Gabaldon
There were a few faint echoes from the common room two floors below, and a brief flurry of noise and movement, but this served only to emphasize my own isolation. -- Diana Gabaldon
I've seen women-and men too, sometimes-as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can. -- Diana Gabaldon
Talkin' like dogs fightin'," he explained. "Grrrr! Wuff!" He growled, shaking his head in illustration like a dog worrying a rat, and I saw Fergus's shoulders shake in suppressed hilarity. "Scots for sure," I said, trying not to laugh. -- Diana Gabaldon
Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat with his boot, so he tells himself, sometimes successfully. -- Diana Gabaldon
Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids -- Diana Gabaldon
Snatched out of my own small niche by an unexpected strong current, taken in and surrounded by Jamie and his life. Caught forever among the strange currents that pulsed through this outlandish environment. The -- Diana Gabaldon