Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

Knowing from experience how difficult it was to distract Frank's attention from this sort of discussion, I simply picked up his hand, wrapped his fingers about the stem of the glass and left him to his own devices.

You don't need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you've written, you should be able to point to any given element—be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point—and say why it's there.

Denn wo Liebe ist, sind Worte überflüssig. Liebe ist alles. Sie ist unvergänglich. Und sie ist genug.

As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.

Don't let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there's something to say.

If I'm goin' to lie on my face wi' my buttocks bared, I want the lass under me, not behind me wi' a hatpin!

Dialogue doesn't take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage.

Then ye live with it, laddie, he said softly. That's all.

Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.

He has cat blood, I reflected sourly, no doubt that was how he managed to sneak up on me in the darkness.

Doom, or save. That I cannot do. For I have no power beyond that of knowledge, no ability to bend others to my will, no way to stop them doing what they will. There is only me. I shook the snow from the folds of my cloak, and turned to follow Maisri down the path, sharing her bitter knowledge that there was only me. And I was not enough.

risings in two days were taking their toll.

BY THE PRICKING OF MY THUMBS

If there's true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.

Act as though this one patient is the only person in the world—because to do otherwise is to lose that one, too. One at a time, that's all you can do. And you learn not to despair over all the ones you can't help, but only to do what you can.

THE MAN IN THE WOOD

me gustaría pensar que no soy como <> y que mi comportamiento no se ajusta al común de los mortales

Knowing him, I thought his main feeling would have been gratification that the wing of Persian antiquities next door had escaped.

Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene requires immense restraint. Show things as simply as possible.

If Scotsmen were stubborn about anything—and, in fact, they tended to be stubborn about quite a number of things, truth be known—it was the virtues of oatmeal parritch for breakfast. Through eons of living in a land so poor there was little to eat but oats, they had as usual converted necessity into a virtue, and insisted that they liked the stuff.

Whatever problems we might be facing - and I knew there were plenty - we were together. Forever. And that was enough.

There were a few faint echoes from the common room two floors below, and a brief flurry of noise and movement, but this served only to emphasize my own isolation.

Jamie's viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He's using physical language, but he isn't talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions.

She was a very old lady indeed, or at least she looked it. She leaned on a hawthorn stick, enveloped in garments she must have