Diana Gabaldon - Outlander (1991)

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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.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

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

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
Knowing that everything is possible suddenly nothing is necessary.

Diana Gabaldon
The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear some last faint witness to the glory of what was.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
Deftly whipping a small tuning fork from his pocket, he struck it smartly against a pillar and held it next to Jamie's left ear. Jamie rolled his eyes heavenward, but shrugged and obligingly sang a note. The little man jerked back as though he'd been shot.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then...

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

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

Diana Gabaldon
Sometimes,' he whispered at last, 'sometimes, I dream I am singing, and I wake from it with my throat aching.' He couldn't see her face, or the tears that prickled at the corners of her eyes. 'What do you sing?' she whispered back. She heard the shush of the linen pillow as he shook his head. 'No song I've ever heard, or know,' he said softly. 'But I know I'm singing it for you.

Diana Gabaldon
Scots have long memories, and they're not the most forgiving of people.

Diana Gabaldon
Where did you learn to kiss like that? I said, a little breathless. He grinned and pulled me close again. I said I was a virgin, not a monk, he said, kissing me again. If I find I need guidance, I'll ask.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
With that height, plus a face of an ugliness so transcendant as to be grotesquely beautiful, it was obvious why she had embraced a religious life—Christ was the only man from whom she might expect embrace in return.

Diana Gabaldon
I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rotting bull. I dinna understand myself.

Diana Gabaldon
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.

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

Diana Gabaldon
Only you," he said, so softly I could barely hear him. "To worship ye with my body, give ye all the service of my hands. To give ye my name, and all my heart and soul with it. Only you. Because ye will not let me lie—and yet ye love me.

Diana Gabaldon
That's for calling your father a fool. It may be true, but it's disrespectful. Brian Fraser to teenage Jamie

Diana Gabaldon
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.

Diana Gabaldon
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?

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

Diana Gabaldon
What are you doing with the child?" I inquired cautiously. "I'm teachin' young James here the fine art of not pissing on his feet," he explained.

Diana Gabaldon