Diana Gabaldon

“If you could do such a thing as that-and I don't mean lying with a woman, I mean doing it and lying to me about it-then everything I've done and everything I've been-my whole life-has been a lie. And I am not prepared to admit such a thing.”

“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 aren't doing it for the sake of ideals, are you? Not for the sake of...liberty. Freedom, self determination, all that.'He shook his head. 'No,' he said softly.'Why, then? I asked, more gently.'For you,' he said without hesitation. '...For my family. For the future. And if that is not an ideal, I've never heard of one.”

“I chose my way when I wed ye, though I kent it not at the time. But I chose, and cannot now turn back, even if I would.''Would you?' I looked into his eyes as I asked, and read the answer there. He shook his head.'Would you? For you have chosen, as much as I.”

“To fight on the winning side was one thing; to survive, quite another.”

“In war, government and their armies were a threat, but it was so often the neighbors who damned or saved you”

“Come to think, perhaps being nearly killed wasn't always a misfortune-so long as you didn't actually die of it.”

“I hold no evil in my heart...This evil does not touch me. More may come, but not this. Not here. Not now.”

“This is the thin time, when the beloved dead draw near. The world turns inward, and the chilling air grows thick with dreams and mystery.”

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

“...women giving birth seemed very often to lose any sense of fear or misgiving...exhibiting an absorption that amounted to indifference-simply because they had no attention to spare for anything beyond the universe bounded by their bellies.”

“Will this be the end of it?''There is never an end to such things,' he said quietly. 'But we are alive. And that is good.”

“It was what you did when someone died; turned toward God and at least acknowledge the fact.”

“We've ghosts enough between us, Sassenach. If the evils of the past canna hinder us-neither then shall any fears of the future. We must just must put things behind us and get on. Aye?”

“How many 'inventions' are really memories, of the things we once knew?”

“...two Protestants, amazingly bound to Catholics and bemused at the strange tides of fate that had washed over them; two men left alone by the misfortunes of life, and now surprised to find themselves the heads of households, holding the lives of strangers in their hands.”

“Roger became aware, in a subliminally marital way, that his wife was disgruntled at the thought of being left behind to organize the harvest-a filthy, exhausting job at the best of times-whilst he frolicked with a squad of his co-religionists in the romantically exciting metropolis of Cross Creek, population two hundred.”

“There were still choices to be made, decisions to reach, actions to take. Many of them. But in one...single declaration of intent, we stepped across the threshold of war.”

“Why d'ye talk to yourself?''It assures me of a good listener.”

“But war has a long fuse, and a slow match.”

“The mountains had their own time, and a wise man did not try to hurry them.”

“…but Sassenach—I am the true home of your heart, and I know that.” He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed my upturned palms, one and then the other, his breath warm and his beard-stubble soft on my fingers.“I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.”

“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.”

“She was the sort of girl called “bonny”—not beautiful, but lively and nicely made, with something about her that took the eye.”

“Help us, O Lord, to remember how often men do wrong through want of thought, rather than from lack of love; and how cunning are the snares that trip our feet.”

“Blessed are those who eat greens, for they shall keep their teeth. Blessed are those who wash their hands after wiping their arses, for they shall not sicken. Blessed are those who boil water, for they shall be called saviors of mankind.”

“His flesh seemed to melt comfortably into Roger’s own, his trust so complete that it was not necessary even to maintain the boundaries of his body—Daddy would do that.”

“and if she wasn’t precisely pretty, she had a force of character that is often more attractive than simple beauty.”

“Mama says the Beardsleys follow her around like dogs, but they don’t. They follow her like tame wolves.I thought Ian said it wasn’t possible to tame wolves.It isn’t.”

“For a long time," he said at last, "when I was small, I pretended to myself that I was the bastard of some great man. All orphans do this, I think," he added dispassionately."It makes life easier to bear, to pretend that it will not always be as it is, that someone will come and restore you to your rightful place in the world." He shrugged."Then I grew older, and knew that this was not true. No one would come to rescue me. But then-" he turned his head and gave Jamie a smile of surpassing sweetness. "Then I grew older still, and discovered that after all, it was true. I am the son of a great man." The hook touched Jamie's hand, hard and capable. "I wish for nothing more.”

“Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim place within, where there was nothing but an aching grey blankness…”

“No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying, once gone, what is left is only an object.”

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

“Roger wondered if this was the sort of way you felt after a battle; the sheer relief of finding yourself alive and unwounded made you want to laugh and arse about, just to prove you still could.”

“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.”

“And if she had not come back to me...if you had not come...if I had known for sure that both of you were dead...Then I would still have lived...and done what must be done. So will you.”

“He's a man...and that's no small thing to be.”

“I understood very well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that doing so will keep it from departing.”

“You invent yourself...You look at other women-or men; you try on their lives for size. You take what you can use, and you look inside yourself for what you can't find elsewhere. And always...always...you wonder if you're doing it right.”

“What he felt, though, was the echo of her flesh, and the reverberations of their farewell, with all its doubts and pleasures.”

“Once a man has lived under arms, I suspect he is marked for life.In fact I have heard it remarked that old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

“I hadn't spent so much time in bemused contemplation of a penis since I was sixteen or so, and here I was, preoccupied with three of the things.”

“Money might not buy happiness, I reflected, but it was a useful commodity, nonetheless.”

“Did that mean she had not cared deeply for any of her husbands? I wondered. Or only that she was a woman of great strength, capable of overcoming grief, not once, but over and over again?”

“...but there came a point when one abandoned hope for faith, and trusted fate for charity.”

“The past is gone-the future is not come. And we are here together, you and I.”

“If needs must, she could do those things for herself-or find another man. And yet...she needed him-would mourn his loss if it came. Perhaps forever. In his present vulnerable mood, that knowledge seemed a great gift.”

“A child was a temptation of the flesh, as well as of the spirit; I knew the bliss of that unbounded oneness, as I knew the bittersweet joy of seeing that oneness fade as the child learned itself and stood alone.But I had crossed some subtle line. Whether it was that I was born myself with some secret quota embodied in my flesh, or only that I knew my sole allegiance must be given elsewhere now...I knew. As a mother, I had the lightness now of effort completed, honor satisfied. Mission accomplished.”

“I'd known that, consciously-and yet I had done it anyway, gone right on with my plans, pursuing my routines, as though life were still settled and predictable, as though nothing whatever might threaten the tenor of my days, As though acting might make it true.”

“Sometimes a shadow rises, and death lies nameless in the dark.”