Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

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. Past that certain point, you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple at that point; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt, and it does not really matter much which.

Still, he was pleased to know that he could recall so much of the play and passed the rest of the journey pleasantly in reciting lines to himself, being careful not to snort.

And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you." [...] Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. No," he said. "That's faith.

A fistula is a passage between two things that ought never to be joined and is, generally speaking, a bad thing.

I did say when we were wed that I would always see ye fed, no?" He pulled me closer, tucking my head into the curve of his shoulder. "I gave ye three things that day," he said softly. "My name, my family, and the protection of my body. You'll have those things always, Sassenach—so long as we both shall live. No matter where we may be. I willna let ye go hungry or cold; I'll let nothing harm ye, ever.

But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.

Its appearance was greeted with cries of rapture, and following a brief struggle over possesion of the volume, William rescued it before it should be torn to pieces, but allowed himself to be induced to read some of the passages aloud, his dramatic rendering being greeted by wolflike howls of enthusiasim and hails of live pits.

He came through the front door just as I barreled into the hallway, and grabbed me round the waist, kissing me with sun-dusty enthusiasm and sandpaper whiskers.

his weight pinning me to the bed.

I haven't," I said shortly. "But I've the sense I was born with, and two ears in good working order. And whatever 'King George's health' may be in Gaelic, I doubt very much that it sounds like 'Bragh Stuart.' " He tossed back his head and laughed. "That it doesna," he agreed. "I'd tell ye the proper Gaelic for your liege lord and ruler, but it isna a word suitable for the lips of a lady, Sassenach or no.

Jealousy had nothing to do with logic.

We have nothing now between us, save – respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.

The light faded slowly, retreating through the trees. The thick mossy trunks grew dense with shadow, edges still rimmed with a fugitive light that hid among the leaves, green shadows shifting with the sunset breeze.

I am your master Ã¢â'¬Â¦ and you're mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.

Oh, many and many a time," he whispered. "When I saw you. When I took ye, not caring did ye want me or no, did ye have somewhere else to be, someone else to love.

Relatively few who could be described as a Red-haired dejenerate Pox-ridden Usuring Son of a Bitch who skulks in Brothels when not drunk and comitting Riot in the Street, I imagine.

Je t'aime, it said: I love you. Un peu, beaucoup, passionnément, pas du tout: A little, a lot, passionately—not at all.

Grey had noticed this female paradox before: women who swooned at the notion of powerful men who would protect them at the same time liked nothing better than an open admission of helplessness on the part of any male within their sphere of influence.

All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory.

Turd-eating son of a flying tortoise

It wasn't a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

One had known the care of other men from his earliest years, a part of the duty of his birthright; the other had come to it later, but both felt that burden to be the will of God, she had no doubt at all-both accepted that duty without question, would honor it, or die in trying. She only hoped it wouldn't come to that-for either of them.

YOU KNOW THAT SOMETHING is coming. Something—a specific, dire, and awful something—will happen. You envision it, you push it away. It rolls slowly, inexorably, back into your mind. You make what preparation you can. Or you think you do, though your bones know the truth—there isn't any way to sidestep, accommodate, lessen the impact. It will come, and you will be helpless before it.

For I hadn't stood frozen at the revelation of Geilie's pregnancy. It was something else I had seen that chilled me to the marrow of my bones. As Geilie had spun, white arms stretched aloft, I saw what she had seen when my own clothes were stripped away. A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.