Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

I put a hand up to cup his cheek, warm and lightly stubbled. I didn't fool myself that this was paradise or even a refuge from the war - wars tended not to stay in one place but moved around, much in the manner of cyclones and even more destructive where they touched down. But for however long it lasted, this was home, and now was peace.

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.

For so many years, he said, 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. I lifted my face toward his, and took the warm breath of him between my own lips. I love you, I said, and did not need to tell him how I meant it.

Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered. "And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret." I couldn't answer, but kissed him, first his hand, its crooked fingers warm and firm, and the brawny wrist of a sword-wielder, and then his mouth, haven and promise and anguish all mingled, and the salt of tears in the taste of him.

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.

Do me the one favor, Sassenach," he said, draping the heavy velvet over my shoulders. "Take a larger fan.

There's no place on earth with more of the old superstitions and magic mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.

I wasn't used to living crowded cheek by jowl with numbers of other people, as was customary here. People ate, slept, and frequently copulated, crammed into tiny, stifling cottages, lit and warmed by smoky peat fires. The only thing they didn't do together was bathe - largely because they didn't bathe.

Thought of blowing your brains out? William blinked, startled. No. That's good. Anything else is bound to be an improvement, isn't it?

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

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.

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!

If ye can stand up, you're not drunk.

By blood and by choice, we make our ghosts; we haunt ourselves.

He who throws dirt is losing ground

My grandsire,' Jamie observed evenly, 'has by all reports got a character that would enable him to hide conveniently behind a spiral staircase.

A man's life had to have more purpose than only to feed himself each day.

What is it about ye, Sassenach, I wonder?" he said conversationally, eyes still fixed on Myers. What is what about me?" He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye. What it is that makes every man ye meet want to take off his breeks within five minutes of meetin' ye.

I've heard it said that a man's reach must exceed his grasp—or what's a heaven for?

Ye dinna stop loving someone just because they're deid," she said reprovingly. "I canna suppose they stop lovin' you, either.

Claire," he said quietly. "Tomorrow I will die. This child Ã¢â'¬Â¦ is all that will be left of me—ever. I ask ye, Claire—I beg you—see it safe." 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.

Filial respect caused Grey to hesitate in passing ex post facto opinions on his mother's judgment, but after half an hour in the company of either Paul or Edgar, he could not escape a lurking suspicion that a just Providence, seeing the DeVanes so well endowed with physical beauty, had determined that there was no reason to spoil the work by adding intelligence to the mix.

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.

It gave him the same odd sense of dislocation, though; that sense of losing some valuable part of himself that could not survive the passage back to daily life. Each time, the passage became more difficult.