Diana Gabaldon
Perhaps it was only that the sense of reaching out to something larger than yourself gives you some feeling that there is something larger - and there really has to be, because plainly you aren't sufficient to the situation.Collection: Giving
For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessaryCollection: Sweet Love
I thought the force of my wanting must wake ye, surely. And then ye did come. . ." He stopped, looking at me with eyes gone soft and dark. "Christ, Claire, ye were so beautiful, there on the stair, wi' your hair down and the shadow of your body with the light behind ye…." He shook his head slowly. "I did think I should die, if I didna have ye," he said softly. "Just then.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Doubt
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.Collection: Pain
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.Collection: Arches
Oh, aye, Sassenach. I am your master . . . and you're mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.Collection: Romance
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.Collection: Doors
He gave you to me," she said, so low I could hardly hear her. "Now I have to give you back to him, Mama.Collection: Giving
Sometimes our best action result in things that are most regrettable.Collection: Action
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.Collection: Sweet
And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours, Claire? I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you." The wind stirred the leaves of the chestnut trees nearby, and the scents of late summer rose up rich around us; pine and grass and strawberries, sun-warmed stone and cool water, and the sharp, musky smell of his body next to mine. "Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed." "That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose. "No," he said. "That's faith.Collection: Summer
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?Collection: Pain
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?Collection: Heart
The overseer wouldna speak to me of Ian, but he told me other things that would curl your hair, if it wasna already curled up like sheep's wool." He glanced at me, and a half-smile lit his face, inspite of his obvious perturbation. "Judging by the state of your hair, Sassenach, I should say that it's going to rain verra soon now.Collection: Rain
It's only that ye looked so beautiful, wi' the fire on your face, and your hair waving in the wind. I wanted to remember it.Collection: Beautiful
Why, what's the matter wi' the poor child?" she demanded of Jamie. "Has she had an accident o' some sort?" "No, it's only she's married me," he said, "though if ye care to call it an accident, ye may.Collection: Children
Do ye want me?" he whispered. "Sassenach, will ye take me - and risk the man that I am, for the sake of the man ye knew?Collection: Men
And Finally I put down the last and the best advice I knew, on growing older. 'Stand up straight and try not to get fat.Collection: Advice
I felt the tributaries of his veins, wished to enter into his bloodstream, travel there, dissolved and bodiless, to take refuge in the thick walled chambers of his heart.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Men
...sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man - not that it usually is known to men; women do it much more often.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Answers
It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.Collection: Country
Highlanders make the truest friends-if only because they make the worst enemies.Collection: Worst Enemy
Why d'ye talk to yourself?' 'It assures me of a good listener.Collection: Good Listener
…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.Collection: Home
You could tell from the books whether a library was meant for show or not. Books that were used had an open, interested feel to them, even if closed and neatly lined up on a shelf in strict order with their fellows. You felt as though the book took as much interest in you as you did in it and was willing to help when you reached for it.Collection: Book
This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her? She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it.Collection: Laughing
I hated him for as long as I could. But then I realized that loving him...that was a part of me, and one of the best parts. It didn't matter that he couldn't love me, that had nothing to do with it. But if I couldn't forgive him, then I could not love him, and that part of me was gone. And I found eventually that I wanted it back." ({Lord John, Drums of Autumn}Collection: Autumn
A hedgehog? And just how does a hedgehog make love?" he demanded. No, I thought. I won't. I will not. But I did. "Very carefully," I replied, giggling helplessly. So now we know just how old that one is, I thought.Collection: Making Love
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.Collection: Males
You are mine, always, if ye will it or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I willna let ye goCollection: Want
Time is a lot of the things people say that God is. There's always preexisting, and having no end. There's the notion of being all powerful-because nothing can stand against time, can it? Not mountains, not armies. And time is, of course, all-healing. Give anything enough time, and everything is taken care of: all pain encompassed, all hardship erased, all loss subsumed. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Remember, man, that thou art dust; and unto dust thou shalt return. And if time is anything akin to God, I suppose that memory must be the devil.Collection: Art
No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.Collection: Pain
I didn't want to tell the story of what makes two people come together, although that's a theme of great power and universality. I wanted to find out what it takes for two people to stay together for fifty years -- or more. I wanted to tell not the story of courtship, but the story of marriage.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Flower
And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life?Collection: Honor
What a mystery blood was -- how did a tiny gesture, a tome of voice, endure through generations like the harder verities of flesh? He had seen it again and again, watching his nieces and nephews grow, and accepted without thought the ehoes of parent and grandparent that appeared for brief moments. the shadow of a face looking back through the years -- that vanished again into the face that was now.Collection: Niece
I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday, he said softly. Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I'd be strong enough to send ye away. He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes. I said 'Lord, if I've never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.' He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me. Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach.Collection: Strong
We got half the doggone MIT college of engineering here, and nobody who can fix a doggone /television/?" Dr. Joseph Abernathy glared accusingly at the clusters of young people scattered around his living room. That's /electrical/ engineering, Pop," his son told him loftily. "We're all mechanical engineers. Ask a mechanical engineer to fix your color TV, that's like asking an Ob-Gyn to look at the sore on your di-ow!" Oh, sorry," said his father, peering blandly over gold-rimmed glasses. "That your foot, Lenny?Collection: Sorry
As usual, the note occupied less than a page and included neither salutation nor closing, Uncle Hal's opinion being that since the letter had a direction upon it, the intended recipient was obvious, the seal indicated plainly who had written it, and he did not waste his time in writing to fools.Collection: Uncles
Your face is my heartCollection: Heart
Bedding her could be anything from tenderness to riot, but to take her when she was a bit the worse for drink was always a particular delight. Intoxicated, she took less care for him than usual; abandoned and oblivious to all but her own pleasure, she would rake him, bite him - and beg him to serve her so, as well. He loved the feeling of power in it, the tantalizing choice between joining her at once in animal lust, or of holding himself-for a time- in check, so as to drive her at his whim.Collection: Animal
Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman's part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Blood
There are things that I canna tell you, at least not yet. And I'll ask nothing of ye that ye canna give me. But what I would ask of ye---when you do tell me something, let it be the truth. And I'll promise ye the same. We have nothing now between us, save---respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies. Do ye agree?Collection: Lying
You're tearin' my guts out, Claire.Collection: Claire
That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess. Jamie FraserCollection: Jamie