Diana Gabaldon quotes:

Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.

So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie

I don't plot the books out ahead of time, I don't plan them. I don't begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don't work with an outline and I don't work in a straight line.

You're beautiful to me, Jamie,I said softly, at last. So beautiful, you break my heart.

Catholics don't believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There's always Confession, after all.--Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie

My father liked me, when I wasna being an idiot. And he loved me, too -- enough to beat the daylights out of me when I was being an idiot. Jamie Fraser

If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.

I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually.

I read all the time. People ask, 'Do you read while you work?' And I say, 'I better.' I take two or three years to finish one of my enormous books, and I can't go that long without reading.

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'd forgive me for Claire - but not for killing your men. He glanced at the two Craddocks, spotty as a pair of raisin puddings and - Grey's look implied - likely no brighter.

I'll leave it to you, Sassenach," he said dryly, "to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.

I didn't say you shouldn't worry, do you think I don't worry? But no, you probably can't do anything about me.' 'Well, maybe no, Sassenach, and maybe so. But I've lived a long enough time now to think it maybe doesna matter so much-- so long as I can love you.' -Claire & Jamie Fraser

One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.

Then kiss me, Claire," he whispered, "And know that you are more to me than life, and I have no regret.

Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.I give ye my Spirit, 'til our Life shall be Done.

Well, I can't remember not being able to read. I was told I could read by myself very well at the age of three.

Blood of my Blood, he whispered, and bone of my bone. You carry me within ye, Claire, and ye canna leave me now, no matter what happens, You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go.

I've seen women-and men too, sometimes-as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can.

It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in 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.

Time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is-in the blink of an eye, a mother can see the child again as they were when they were born, when they learned how to walk, as they were at any age-at any time, even when the child is fully grown or a parent themselves.

If it was a sin for you to choose me . . . then I would go to the Devil himself and bless him for tempting ye to it.

I meant it, Claire,' he said quietly. 'My life is yours. And it's yours to decide what we shall do, where we go next. To France, to Italy, even back to Scotland. My heart has been yours since first I saw ye, and you've held my soul and body between your two hands here, and kept them safe. We shall go as ye say.

He wanted to ask whether she were insane, but he had been married long enough to know the price of injudicious rhetorical questions.

Brave' covers everything from complete insanity and bloody disregard of other people's lives - generals tend to go in for that sort - to drunkenness, foolhardiness, and outright idiocy - to the sort of thing that will make a man sweat and tremble and throw up and go and do what he thinks he has to do anyway.

Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved.

I wondered what sort of man - or woman, perhaps? - had lain here, leaving no more than an echo of their bones, so much more fragile than the enduring rocks that sheltered them."

His own eyes were soft and dreamy, cloudy as a trout pool in the rain."

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."

I had one last try. "Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?" He hesitated a moment before answering. "Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am." He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door. "Reckon one of us should know what they're doing," he said. The door closed softly behind him; clearly the courtship was over.

I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower's stem.

Do you really think we'll ever--" "I do," he said with certainty, not letting me finish. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. "I know it, Sassenach, and so do you. You were meant to be a mother, and I surely dinna intend to let anyone else father your children.

Aye, well, he'll be wed a long time," he said callously. "Do him no harm to keep his breeches on for one night. And they do say that abstinence makes the heart grow firmer, no?" "Absence," I said, dodging the spoon for a moment. "AND fonder. If anything's growing firmer from abstinence, it wouldn't be his heart.

I was born for you" -Claire Fraser, Outlander

...well, if women's work was never done, why trouble about how much of it wasn't being accomplished at any given moment?

I'll scream!" "Likely. If not before, certainly during. I expect they'll hear ye at the next farm; you've got good lungs.

He shook his head, absorbed in one of his feats of memory, those brief periods of scholastic rapture where he lost touch with the world around him, absorbed completely in conjuring up knowledge from all its sources.

It isn't necessarily easier if you know what it is you're meant to do-- but at least you don't waste time in questioning or doubting. If you're honest--well, that isn't necessarily easier, either. Though I suppose if you're honest with yourself and know what you are, at least you're less likely to feel that you've wasted your life, doing the wrong thing.

He leaned close, rubbing his bearded cheek against my ear. 'And how about a sweet kiss, now, for the brave lads of the clan MacKenzie? Tulach Ard!' Erin go bragh,' I said rudely, and pushed with all my strength.

A general cry of "What book? What book? Let us see this famous book!

Oh, womanly sympathy, love AND food?" I said, laughing. "Don't want a lot, do you?

There is an oath upon her," he said to Arch, and I realized dimly that he was still speaking in Gaelic, though I understood him clearly. "She may not kill, save it is for mercy or her life. It is myself who kills for her.

Sassenach." He had called me that from the first; the Gaelic word for outlander, a stranger. An Englishman. First in jest, then in affection.

It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.

Are some people destined for a great fate, or to do great things? Or is it only that they're born somehow with that great passion -- and if they find themselves in the right circumstances, then things happen? It's the sort of thing you wonder...

What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos.

While the Lord might insist that vengeance was His, no male Highlander of my acquaintance had ever thought it right that the Lord should be left to handle such things without assistance.

Highlanders make the truest friends-if only because they make the worst enemies.

Alright, all right," I said. "What if I tell you a story, instead?" Highlanders loved stories, and Jamie was no exception. "Oh, aye, " he said, sounding much happier. "What sort of story is it?

I dinna know what's a sadist. And if I forgive you for this afternoon, I reckon you'll forgive me, too, as soon as ye can sit down again." "As for my pleasure..." His lip twitched. "I said I would have to punish you. I did not say I wasna going to enjoy it." He crooked a finger at me. "Come here.

Tell him I hate him to his guts and the marrow of his bones!

But we are here, all of us. And we're here because I love you, more than the life that was mine. Because I believed you loved me the same way...will you tell me that's not true? No, he said after a moment, so softly I could barely hear him. His hand tightened harder on mine. No, I willna tell ye that. Not ever, Claire.

That's not precisely what I had in mind." Jamie, I had found out by accident a few days previously, had never mastered the art of winking one eye. Instead, he blinked solemnly, like a large red owl.

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.

Don't be afraid. There's the two of us now.

That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess. Jamie Fraser

Harmless as a setting dove," he agreed. "I'm too hungry to be a threat to anything but breakfast. Let a stray bannock come within reach, though, and I'll no answer for the consequences.

You are safe," he said firmly. "You have my name and my family, my clan, and if necessary, the protection of my body as well. The man willna lay hands on ye again, while I live.

I swore an oath before the altar of God to protect this woman. And if you're tellin' me that ye consider your own authority to be greater than that of the Almighty, then I must inform ye that I'm not of that opinion, myself.

You'll lie wi' me now," he said quietly. "And I shall use ye as I must. And if you'll have your revenge for it, then take it and welcome, for my soul is yours, in all the black corners of it.

You are my courage, as I am your conscience," he whispered. "You are my heart---and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone. Do ye not know that, Sassenach?

I wouldna cross the road to see a scrawny woman if she was stark naked and dripping wet. ~Jamie Fraser

It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch.

If I die," he whispered in the dark, "dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.

you might not be the first person l kissed, but you will be the last' Jamie to Claire in Outlander (not word perfect)

I love you, a nighean donn. I have loved ye from the moment I saw ye, I will love ye 'til time itself is done, and so long as you are by my side, I am well pleased wi' the world.

Are you alright?No, I bumped my head. Rubbing the spot, I looked dazedly around the bare hallwayWhat did I bang it on? I demanded ungrammaticallyMy head. he said, rather grumpily, I thought.

Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.

Jamie shook his head at me admiringlyAnd here I thought I married you because ye had a fair face and a fine fat arse. To think you've a brain as well! He neatly dodged the blow I aimed at his ear, and grinned at me.

I gave you justice, it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy , too, so far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear.

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.

When you're reading, you're not where you are; you're in the book. By the same token, I can write anywhere.

The law's a necessary evil--we canna be doing without it--but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience?

I heard you went to Ireland...I haven't seen it in many years. Is it still green then, and beautiful?Wet as a bath sponge and mud to the knees but, aye, it was green enough.

Blood of my Blood," he whispered, "and bone of my bone. You carry me within ye, Claire, and ye canna leave me now, no matter what happens, You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go.

For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary

It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs.

And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I've served ye well.

He splayed a hand out over the photographs, trembling fingers not quite touching the shiny surface, and then he turned and leaned toward me, slowly, with the improbable grace of a tall tree falling. He buried his face in my shoulder and went very quietly and thoroughly to pieces.

You dinna need to understand me, Sassenach," he said quietly. "So long as you love me.

Does it ever stop? The wanting you?" "Even when I've just left ye. I want you so much my chest feels tight and my fingers ache with wanting to touch ye again.

People assume that science is a very cold sort of profession, whereas writing novels is a warm and fuzzy intuitive thing. But in fact, they are not at all different.

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.

I work late at night. I'm awake and nobody bothers me. It's quiet and things come and talk to me in the silence.

I wept bitterly, surrendering momentarily to my fear and heartbroken confusion, but slowly I began to quiet a bit, as Jamie stroked my neck and back, offering me the comfort of his broad, warm chest. My sobs lessened and I began to calm myself, leaning tiredly into the curve of his shoulder. No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to the soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I'd let him ride me anywhere.

At last I took one big, callused hand and slid forward so I knelt on the boards between his knees. I laid my head against his chest, and felt his breath stir my hair. I had no words, but I had made my choice. "'Whither thou goest,'" I said. "'I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God: Where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried.' Be it Scottish hill or southern forest. You do what you have to; I'll be there.

There aren't any answers, only choices

It has always been forever, for me, Sassenach

When you hold a child to your breast to nurse, the curve of the little head echoes exactly the curve of the breast it suckles, as though this new person truly mirrors the flesh from which it sprang.

Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

Sassenach, I've been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper - which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children an I dinna like to flog men, and I've had to do both. I've two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. If you've anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, 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.

I do know it, my own. Let me tell ye in your sleep how much I love you. For there's no so much I can be saying to ye while ye wake, but the same poor words, again and again. While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them. Go back to sleep, mo duinne.

Am I a man? To want you so badly that nothing else matters? To see you, and know I would sacrifice honor or family or life itself to lie wi' you, even though ye'd left me?

Jamie," I said, "how, exactly, do you decide whether you're drunk?" Aroused by my voice, he swayed alarmingly to one side, but caught himself on the edge of the mantelpiece. His eyes drifted around the room, then fixed on my face. For an instant, they blazed clear and pellucid with intelligence. "och, easy, Sassenach, If ye can stand up, you're not drunk." He let go of the mantelpiece, took a step toward me, and crumpled slowly onto the hearth, eyes blank, and a wide, sweet smile on his dreaming face.

How did you keep this by you?" Grey demanded abruptly. "You were searched to the skin when you were brought back." The wide mouth curved slightly in the first genuine smile Grey had seen. "I swallowed it," Fraser said. Grey's hand closed convulsively on the sapphire. He opened his hand and rather gingerly set the gleaming blue thing on the table by the chess piece. "I see," he said. "I'm sure you do, Major," said Fraser, with a gravity that merely made the glint of amusement in his eyes more pronounced. "A diet of rough parritch has its advantages, now and again.

But a man is not forgotten, as long as there are two people left under the sky. One, to tell the story; the other, to hear it.

I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is the one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest." His voice dropped, nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me. Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.

Ye werena the first lass I kissed," he said softly. "But I swear you'll be the last.

Torn between the impulse to stroke his head, and the urge to cave it in with a rock, I did neither.

An Englishman thinks a hundred miles is a long way; and American thinks a hundred years is a long time

Man's sense of Morality tends to decrease as his Power increases

I talk to you as I talk to my own soul," he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple. "And Sassenach," he whispered, "Your face is my heart.

forgiveness is not a single act, but a matter of constant practice

The rest of the journey passed uneventfully, if you consider it uneventful to ride fifteen miles on horseback through rough country at night, frequently without benefit of roads, in company with kilted men armed to the teeth, and sharing a horse with a wounded man. At least we were not set upon by highwaymen, we encountered no wild beasts, and it didn't rain. By the standards I was becoming used to, it was quite dull.

I can bear pain myself, he said softly, but I couldna bear yours. That would take more strength than I have.

If I find I need guidance, Iâ??ll ask.

I work on multiple projects at a time because it keeps me from getting writer's block.

And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.

Really rather fascinating, you know,' he confided, and I recognized, with an internal sigh, the song of the scholar, as identifying a sound as the terr-whit! of a thrush.

Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.

Do you know,' he said again softly, addressing his hands, 'what it is to love someone, and never - never! - be able to give them peace, or joy, or happiness?' He looked up then, eyes filled with pain. 'To know that you cannot give them happiness, not through any fault of yours or theirs, but only because you were not born the right person for them?

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

Lord that she might be safe. She and my children.

He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.