Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

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

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.

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.

I fought back the memory of our wedding night. He was a virgin; his hands trembled when he touched me. I had been afraid too--with better reason. And then in the dawn he had held me, naked back against his chest, his thighs warm and strong behind my own, murmuring into the clouds of my hair, Dinna be afraid. There's two of us now.

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.

Well, I'll tell ye, Sassenach, 'graceful' is possibly not the first word that springs to mind at the thought of you. He slipped an arm behind me, one hand large and warm around my silk-clad shoulder. 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.

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.

You can…call me Da," he said. His voice was husky; he stopped and cleared his throat. "If—if ye want to, I mean, Da. Is that Gaelic?" He smiled back, the corners of his mouth trembling slightly. "No. It's only…simple." And suddenly it was all simple. He held out his arms to her. She stepped into them and found that she had been wrong;—and his arms were as strong about her as she had ever dared to hope.

and if she wasn't precisely pretty, she had a force of character that is often more attractive than simple beauty.

Oh. It's Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.

Are ye all right, man? Ian asked, in the same tone of mild concern he'd heard his da use now and then on his mam or Uncle Jamie. Evidently it was in fact the right tone to take with a Fraser about to go berserk, for William breathed like a grampus for a moment or two, then got himself under control.

a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact

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.

It's only when ye ken ye can say no that it takes courage.

The night was cold, and very quiet, as though we were the only two souls in the world.

but, like many ideas, that one was more appealing in concept than in execution

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

She supposed that it it perhaps not fair to quarrel with someone on the basis of what you thought they were thinking

In defense of King, country, and family, he would unhesitatingly have sacrificed his virtue to Nessie, had that been required. If it was a question of Olivia marrying a man with syphilis and half the British army being exterminated in battle, versus himself experiencing a personal interview with Richard Caswell, though, he rather thought Olivia and the King had best look to their own devices.

Facing something down doesn´t mean you aren´t afraid of it, I said dryly. Usually quite the opposite.

Some kinds of hunger were sweet in themselves, the anticipation of satisfaction as keen a pleasure as the slaking.

My body is out from my control," he said softly. "She was the half of my body—the very half of my soul.

but there came a point when one abandoned hope for faith, and trusted fate for charity.

He tolk both my hands in his, then, and kissed them - the left which still bore the gold ring of my marriage to Frank, and then the right, with his own silver ring.. Da mi basia mille, he whispered, smiling. Give me a thousand kisses. It was the inscription inside my ring, a brief quotation from a love song by Catullus. I bent and gave him one back. Dein mille altera, I said. Then a thousand more.