Quotes from 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.

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.

But 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.

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

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.

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.

Sassenach. He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.

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

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.

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.

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.

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!

Home is the place where they have to take you in

No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.

There was another reason. The main one." "Reason?" I said stupidly. Why I married you." Which was?" I don't know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family's contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way. Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly.

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.

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.

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

What are you doing with the child? I inquired cautiously. I'm teachin' young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet, he explained.

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

Roger speaking to Brianna: It's too important. You don't forget having a dad. You do remember your father? No. I remember yours.

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.

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.