Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

I can bear pain, myself, but I could not bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.

You felt as though the book took as much interest in you as you did in it and was willing to help when you reached for it.

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.

After all, I thought, what were days and weeks in the presence of eternity?

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!

Roger became aware, in a subliminally marital way, that his wife was disgruntled at the thought of being left behind to organize the harvest-a filthy, exhausting job at the best of times-whilst he frolicked with a squad of his co-religionists in the romantically exciting metropolis of Cross Creek, population two hundred.

They do say that God protects fools—but I think even the Almighty will lose patience now and then.

Fat-heided creatures, the Carmichaels, she said judiciously. Loyal enough, but stubborn as rocks. Thus sayeth a Fraser, I remarked. The Carmichaels must be something special in that line.

Because, Sassenach," he said, very dryly indeed, "when ye're a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children—your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it's clear to everyone who's in charge.

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.

You're real," he whispered. I had thought him pale already. Now all vestiges of color drained from his face.

Sometimes twenty years seemed like an instant, and sometimes it seemed like a very long time indeed.

He shook his head slowly from side to side, as though it were very heavy. I could almost hear the contents sloshing.

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.

Damn you, Sassenach! his voice said, from a very great distance. His voice was choked with passion. Damn you! I swear if ye die on me, I'll kill you!

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.

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.

Come to think, perhaps being nearly killed wasn't always a misfortune-so long as you didn't actually die of it.

There is nothing more delightful in life than a feather bed and an open fire—except a feather bed with a warm and tender lover in it.

There was nothing frightening about the dead man; there never is. No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it's only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying; once gone, what is left is only an object

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.

I didn't know what it was about red hair, but many years' experience with Jamie, Brianna, and Jemmy had taught me that while most people became irritable when hungry, a redheaded person with an empty stomach was a walking time bomb.

That's what he got for neglecting his work to go on wild-goose chases to impress a girl

Faith is as powerful a force as science-- but far more dangerous