Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

I had come to the conclusion - based on experience - that the only real way of learning to write a novel was probably to write a novel.

it was an act of trust to sleep in the presence of another person. If the trust was mutual, simple sleep could bring you closer together than the joining of bodies.

The simple act of writing Fraser's name had given him a sense of connexion, and he realized that the desperate need for such connexion was what had driven him to write it.

If ever you find yourself in the midst of paradox, you can be sure you stand on the edge of truth," his adoptive father had told him once. "You may not know what it is, mind," he'd added with a smile. "But it's there.

One never stops to think what underlies romance. Tragedy and terror, transmuted by time.

Facing something down doesn't mean you aren't afraid of it," I said dryly. "Usually quite the opposite.

Well, I suppose men can make all the laws they like," he said, "but God made hope. The stars willna burn out.

But I do know. At the same Time, I cannot be sure how the Things that I know will come about. Am I meant to be in some Way Part of this? Should I hold back, will that somehow damage or prevent the Success of our Desires? I often wish I could discuss these Questions with your Husband, though Presbyterian that he is, I think he would find them even more unsettling than I do. And in the end, it does not matter. I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.

Mmphm," he said. "Hell of a choice, there. A stick up the cock, or a finger up the backside, eh?

Advice? You're too old to be given it and too young to take it.

I was crying for joy, my Sassenach," he said softly. He reached out slowly and took my face between his hands. "And thanking God that I have two hands. That I have two hands to hold you with. To serve you with, to love you with. Thanking God that I am a whole man still, because of you.

people will treat with disdain such phenomena as are proved by the evidence of the senses, and commonly experienced—while they will defend to the death the reality of a phenomenon which they have neither seen nor experienced.

The man that takes her in unholy embrace will have his privates blasted like a frostbitten apple," he said, with relish, "and his soul will burn forever in hell." He bared his teeth at his grandfather, and drew back his hand. "Like this." The beechwood teeth landed in the midst of the fire with a plop, and at once began to sizzle.

Aye, lass, courage like that is uncommon rare. It wasna ignorance, mind; he'd just seen two men flogged and he knew the same was coming to him. It's just he had made up his mind there was no help for it. Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way for a Scotsman, ye ken, but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.

that a man must be responsible for any seed 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.

Do women hold back the evolution of such things as freedom and other social ideals, out of fear for themselves or their children? Or do they in fact inspire such things – and the risks required to reach them – by providing the things worth fighting for? Not merely fighting to defend, either, but to propel forward, for a man wanted more for his children than he would ever have.

In that case, maybe we shouldn't be disturbing you," said a soft American voice. "Oh, I forgot," said Claire, half-turning to the girl who had stood out of sight in the corner of the porch. "Roger Wakefield—my daughter, Brianna.

With vivid memories of the last IRS form, I had signed, I agreed sympathetically that a two percent tax rate was a positive outrage, wondering to myself just what had become of the fiery spirit of American taxpayers over the intervening two hundred years.

You want me to attend your hanging?" His tone must have contained some of the incredulity he felt, for the captain gave him an impatient look. "I'd have sent an engraved invitation, had I time," he said.

a redheaded person with an empty stomach was a walking time bomb. I

the power and the danger of magic lie in the people who believe it.

I couldn't think how long it had been since I had read a novel. And in the daytime! Feeling pleasantly wicked, I sat by the open window in my surgery and resolutely entered a world far from my own.

I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eighteenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die.