Quotes from Diana Gabaldon

wasna expecting the Spanish Inquisition," she said, a little testily.

appealing than truth and rationality. The words

tethered . . . "What about it, owd lass?" he asked the mare, in the

D'ye ken that the only time I am without pain is in your bed, Sassenach? When I take ye, when I lie in your arms—my wounds are healed, then, my scars forgotten.

To fight disease without medicine is to push against a shadow; a darkness that spreads as inexorably as night.

I could feel Roger's eyes on the barrel, watching the curious alchemy of cookery, that process of making the transfer of life from one being to another palatable.

How should I know?" Jamie said testily. "D'ye think I had anything to do wi' engaging midwives?" Mrs. Martin, the old midwife who had delivered all previous Murray children, had died—like so many others—during the famine in the year following Culloden. Mrs. Innes, the new midwife, was much younger; he hoped she had sufficient experience to know what she was doing.

Red-heeled shoes and silk stockings clocked in black. Gray satin breeches with silver knee buckles. Snowy linen, with Brussels lace six inches deep at cuff and jabot. The coat, a masterpiece in heavy gray with blue satin cuffs and crested silver buttons, hung behind the door, awaiting its turn.

Now, I am not basically a nice person. I _am_ snice, arrogant, and short-tempered. I try to overcome these things, and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

I won't forget you, she said silently to the dead. It seemed so pitiful a thing to say—so small and futile. And yet the only thing in her power.

Ah, folk fash ye as much as ye let them;

The lines of stress in Grey's face eased a little. "I see," he said slowly. "So—you have not seen him since—my God, that's twenty years!" He stared at me, dumbfounded. "And four months? Why—how—" He shook his head, brushing away the questions.

wee surprise for ye. Fergus!" Fergus, likewise beaming, came from behind a wagon, ushering a slight man with windblown

cloud, a uniform color from horizon to

earth that would make him humiliate himself in that fashion before the Sergeant. "Write. It. Down." The Sergeant bit off the words between his teeth.

The wean might be about to fall face-first into the fire, but nobody—save maybe Ian—was going to know it, if it killed him. Ian

Coming back, he saw the dark spots on the back of Jamie's shirt, blotches where fresh blood had seeped through the bandages. The sight filled him with fury, as well as fear. He'd seen such things; the wean had been flogged. Badly, and recently. Who? How?

and he shuddered in spite of the heat and crossed himself.

He wrapped his arms about his

DON'T ASK QUESTIONS YOU DON'T WANT TO HEAR THE ANSWERS TO In the woods, an hour's ride outside Philadelphia JOHN GREY HAD BEEN quite resigned to dying. Had expected it from the moment that he'd blurted out, "I have had carnal knowledge of your wife." The only question in his mind had been whether Fraser would shoot him, stab him, or eviscerate him with his bare hands.

Well, I'll tell ye, Sassenach, graceful is possibly not the first word that springs to mind at the thought of you. But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul. And, Sassenach, your face is my heart.

When the light came, it would fall just so, across his pillow. She'd see his sleeping face in the light: the jackstraw hair, the fading bruise on his temple, the deep-set eyes, closed in innocence. He looked so young, asleep. Almost as young as he really was. Only twenty-two; too young to have such lines in his face.

THE FRENCHMAN'S GOLD We found Jocasta Cameron Innes on the window seat in her room, clad in her chemise, bound hand and foot with strips of bed linen, and absolutely scarlet-faced with fury. I had no time to take further note of her condition, for Duncan Innes, clad for the night in

If the loss of Ian haunts my dreams, the loss of you haunts my days, Jamie.