Diana gabaldon quotes

I thought I could make out Jamie's Highland screech, but that was likely imagination; they all sounded equally demented.

The most irritating thing about cliches, I decided, was how frequently they were true.

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.

I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

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.

Jamie," I said, "how, exactly, do you decide whether you're drunk?" Aroused by my voice, he swayed alarmingly to one side, but caught himself on the edge of the mantelpiece. His eyes drifted around the room, then fixed on my face. For an instant, they blazed clear and pellucid with intelligence. "och, easy, Sassenach, If ye can stand up, you're not drunk." He let go of the mantelpiece, took a step toward me, and crumpled slowly onto the hearth, eyes blank, and a wide, sweet smile on his dreaming face.

Hard to believe lightning can strike twice, but it surely did. The moment Caitriona Balfe came on screen, I sat up straight and said, ‘There she is!’ She and Sam Heughan absolutely lit up the screen with fireworks.

Then let amourous kisses dwell On our lips, begin and tell A Thousand and a Hundred score A Hundred and a Thousand more

Well, I can't remember not being able to read. I was told I could read by myself very well at the age of three.

I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest." His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

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.

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.

Why d'ye talk to yourself?' 'It assures me of a good listener.

How did you keep this by you?" Grey demanded abruptly. "You were searched to the skin when you were brought back." The wide mouth curved slightly in the first genuine smile Grey had seen. "I swallowed it," Fraser said. Grey's hand closed convulsively on the sapphire. He opened his hand and rather gingerly set the gleaming blue thing on the table by the chess piece. "I see," he said. "I'm sure you do, Major," said Fraser, with a gravity that merely made the glint of amusement in his eyes more pronounced. "A diet of rough parritch has its advantages, now and again.

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.

And Finally I put down the last and the best advice I knew, on growing older. 'Stand up straight and try not to get fat.

Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

Oh, Claire, ye do break my heart wi' loving you.

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.

Knowing that everything is possible suddenly nothing is necessary.

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.

I wouldna cross the road to see a scrawny woman if she was stark naked and dripping wet. ~Jamie Fraser

I work on multiple projects at a time because it keeps me from getting writer's block.

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.

…but Sassenach—I am the true home of your heart, and I know that.” He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed my upturned palms, one and then the other, his breath warm and his beard-stubble soft on my fingers. “I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.

Your face is my heart

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.

Aye, well, he'll be wed a long time," he said callously. "Do him no harm to keep his breeches on for one night. And they do say that abstinence makes the heart grow firmer, no?" "Absence," I said, dodging the spoon for a moment. "AND fonder. If anything's growing firmer from abstinence, it wouldn't be his heart.

For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here," he said, so softly I could barely hear him, "here in the dark, with you… I have no name.

If I die before I say 'I love you' it's because I didn't have the time.

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.

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.

At last I took one big, callused hand and slid forward so I knelt on the boards between his knees. I laid my head against his chest, and felt his breath stir my hair. I had no words, but I had made my choice. "'Whither thou goest,'" I said. "'I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.' Be it Scottish hill or southern forest. You do what you have to; I'll be there.

A general cry of "What book? What book? Let us see this famous book!

......what I was born does not matter, only what I will make of myself, only what I will become.

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.

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.

I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually.

There aren't any answers, only choices

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.

Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.

He reached forward then took me in his arms, held me close for a moment, the breath of snow and ashes cold around us. Then he kissed me, released me, and I took a deep breath of cold air, harsh with the scent of burning.

And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life?

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.

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.

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?

It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.

I always thought it would be a simple matter to lie wi' a woman, he said softly. And yet... I want to fall on my face at your feet and worship you"-he dropped the towel and reached out, taking me by the shoulders-"and still I want to force ye to your knees before me, and hold ye there wi' me hands tangled in your hair, and your mouth at my service...and I want both things at the same time, Sassenach.

Time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is-in the blink of an eye, a mother can see the child again as they were when they were born, when they learned how to walk, as they were at any age-at any time, even when the child is fully grown or a parent themselves.

I have lived through war, and lost much. I know what's worth the fight, and what is not. Honor and courage are matters of the bone, and what a man will kill for, he will sometimes die for, too. And that, O kinsman, is why a woman has broad hips; that bony basin will harbor a man and his child alike. A man's life springs from his woman's bones, and in her blood is his honor christened. For the sake of love alone, I would walk through fire again.

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.

I hated him for as long as I could. But then I realized that loving him...that was a part of me, and one of the best parts. It didn't matter that he couldn't love me, that had nothing to do with it. But if I couldn't forgive him, then I could not love him, and that part of me was gone. And I found eventually that I wanted it back." ({Lord John, Drums of Autumn}

I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then.

The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.

I wept bitterly, surrendering momentarily to my fear and heartbroken confusion, but slowly I began to quiet a bit, as Jamie stroked my neck and back, offering me the comfort of his broad, warm chest. My sobs lessened and I began to calm myself, leaning tiredly into the curve of his shoulder. No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I'd let him ride me anywhere.

I swore an oath before the altar of God to protect this woman. And if you're tellin' me that ye consider your own authority to be greater than that of the Almighty, then I must inform ye that I'm not of that opinion, myself.

He's a man...and that's no small thing to be.

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.

Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.

I was crying and laughing, snuffing tears and blood, bumping at him with my bound hands, trying awkwardly to thrust them at him so that he could cut the rope. He quit grappling, and clutched me so hard against him that I yelped in pain as my face was pressed against his plaid. He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn’t manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; he had no English.

...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.

You are safe," he said firmly. "You have my name and my family, my clan, and if necessary, the protection of my body as well. The man willna lay hands on ye again, while I live.

So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie

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.

I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love.

Do you know,' he said again softly, addressing his hands, 'what it is to love someone, and never - never! - be able to give them peace, or joy, or happiness?' He looked up then, eyes filled with pain. 'To know that you cannot give them happiness, not through any fault of yours or theirs, but only because you were not born the right person for them?

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.

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.

It has always been forever, for me, Sassenach

I do know it, my own. 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 back to sleep, mo duinne.

To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live.

Character, I think, is the single most important thing in fiction. You might read a book once for its interesting plot—but not twice.

I meant it, Claire,' he said quietly. 'My life is yours. And it's yours to decide what we shall do, where we go next. To France, to Italy, even back to Scotland. My heart has been yours since first I saw ye, and you've held my soul and body between your two hands here, and kept them safe. We shall go as ye say.

Do ye want me?" he whispered. "Sassenach, will ye take me - and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?

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.

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

We got half the doggone MIT college of engineering here, and nobody who can fix a doggone /television/?" Dr. Joseph Abernathy glared accusingly at the clusters of young people scattered around his living room. That's /electrical/ engineering, Pop," his son told him loftily. "We're all mechanical engineers. Ask a mechanical engineer to fix your color TV, that's like asking an Ob-Gyn to look at the sore on your di-ow!" Oh, sorry," said his father, peering blandly over gold-rimmed glasses. "That your foot, Lenny?

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.

It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.

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.

Scots have long memories, and they're not the most forgiving of people.

Sassenach, I've been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper - which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children an I dinna like to flog men, and I've had to do both. I've two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. If you've anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!

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.

Your face is my heart Sassenach, and the love of you is my soul

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!

The past is gone-the future is not come. And we are here together, you and I.

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.

No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I’d let him ride me anywhere.

Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way... but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.

The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep's wool." He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, inspite of his obvious perturbation. "Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it's going to rain verra soon now.

This is our time. Until that time stops - for one of us, for both – it is our time. Now. Will you waste it, because you are afraid?

Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered, "And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret.

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.

You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?

Highlanders make the truest friends-if only because they make the worst enemies.

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

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.

When you're reading, you're not where you are; you're in the book. By the same token, I can write anywhere.

...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?

Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

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.

Lord that she might be safe. She and my children.

forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice

It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these-- the still moments, as he called them to himself-- they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible.

Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.

An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time

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.

Ye werena the first lass I kissed," he said softly. "But I swear you'll be the last.

And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.

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.

Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all. --Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie

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.

I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.

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.

Bedding her could be anything from tenderness to riot, but to take her when she was a bit the worse for drink was always a particular delight. Intoxicated, she took less care for him than usual; abandoned and oblivious to all but her own pleasure, she would rake him, bite him - and beg him to serve her so, as well. He loved the feeling of power in it, the tantalizing choice between joining her at once in animal lust, or of holding himself-for a time- in check, so as to drive her at his whim.

But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it.

That's for calling your father a fool. It may be true, but it's disrespectful. Brian Fraser to teenage Jamie

People assume that science is a very cold sort of profession, whereas writing novels is a warm and fuzzy intuitive thing. But in fact, they are not at all different.

Really love him, I mean," Geilie persisted. "Not just to bed him; I know you want that, and he does too. They all do. But do you love him?" Did I love him? Beyond the urges of the flesh? The hole had the dark anonymity of the confessional, and a soul on the verge of death had no time for lies. "Yes," I said, and laid my head back on my knees. It was silent in the hole for some time, and I hovered once more on the verge of sleep, when I heard her speak once more, as though to herself. "So it's possible," she said thoughtfully.

You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach," he said quietly. "So long as you love me.

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

D'ye think I don't know?" he asked softly. "It's me that has the easy part now. For if ye feel for me as I do for you-then I'm asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.

That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess. Jamie Fraser

A cold supper, were you thinking? I asked dubiously. I was not, he said firmly, I mean to light a roaring fire in the kitchen hearth, fry up a dozen eggs in butter, and eat them all, then lay ye down on the hearth rug and roger ye 'till you - is that all right? he inquired, noticing my look. 'Til I what? I asked fascinated by his description of the evening's program. 'Til ye burst into flame and take me with ye, I suppose, he said, and stooping, swooped me up into his arms and carried me across the darkened threshold.