Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “All over the clearing, the same thing was happening; the women gave not an inch, but their men stepped out before them. Anyone coming into the clearing would think that the women had melted into invisibility, leaving an implacable phalanx of Scotsmen staring down the glen.”

— Diana Gabaldon

452. “Black Jack. A common name for rogues and scoundrels in the eighteenth century. A staple of romantic fiction, the name conjured up charming highwaymen, dashing blades in plumed hats. The reality waled at my side.”

— Diana Gabaldon

453. “Seeing them, Jamie reached for a remnant of bread, and tossed it with considerable accuracy into the middle of the flock, which exploded like shrapnel, all fleeing the sudden intrusion.”

— Diana Gabaldon

454. “A forced oath canna bind a man, though, or keep him from his knowledge of right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

455. “Feel my heart,” he said. His voice sounded thick to his own ears. “Tell me if it stops.”

— Diana Gabaldon

456. “So ye’ve come back to him,” he said happily. “God, that’s romantic!”

— Diana Gabaldon

457. “It’s only when the blood is bright red, and a terrible lot all at once, that ye worry.”

— Diana Gabaldon

458. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

459. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

460. “Stephan’s hand left his breast, and reached out. Grey took it, and felt love flow between them. He thought that heart and body must be entirely melted – if only for that moment.”

— Diana Gabaldon

461. “Grey was modest about his own endowments, but also honest enough to admit that he possessed some and that his person was reasonably attractive to women.”

— Diana Gabaldon

462. “It wasn’t that Friends thought that the Lord spoke only to them; it was only that they weren’t sure other folk listened very often.”

— Diana Gabaldon

463. “He looked like Bree, didn’t he? He was like her?” “Yes.” He breathed heavily, almost a snort. “I could see it in your face – when you’d look at her, I could see you thinking of him. Damn you, Claire Beauchamp,” he said, very softly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

464. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

465. “Ye ken how to pick a good lass, MacKenzie? Start at the bottom and work your way up!”

— Diana Gabaldon

466. “I had seen even well-established marriages shatter under the strain of smaller things. And those that did not shatter, but were crippled by mistrust.”

— Diana Gabaldon

467. “With vivid memories of the last IRS form, I had signed, I agreed sympathetically that a two percent tax rate was a positive outrage, wondering to myself just what had become of the fiery spirit of American taxpayers over the intervening two hundred years.”

— Diana Gabaldon

468. “There was a sudden whoosh from above, followed immediately by a blur before my eyes and a dull thud. Captain Randall was on the ground at my feet, under a heaving mass that looked like a bundle of old plaid rags. A brown, rocklike fist rose out of the mass and descended with considerable force, meeting decisively with some bony protuberance, by the sound of the resultant crack. The Captain’s struggling legs, shiny in tall brown boots, relaxed quite suddenly. I.”

— Diana Gabaldon

469. “I marched into the shop and bought the vases.”

— Diana Gabaldon

470. “He had enough experience in the business of prayer to recognize an answer when it showed up, though, however unwelcome.”

— Diana Gabaldon

471. “Might he ever see Jamie Fraser again? There was a good chance he would not. If chance did not kill him, cowardice might. The mania of confession was on him; best make the most of it. His quill had dried; he did not dip it again. I love you, he wrote, the strokes light and fast, making scarcely a mark upon the paper, with no ink. I wish it were not so. Then he rose, scooped up the scribbled papers, and, crushing them into a ball, threw them into the fire.”

— Diana Gabaldon

472. “My marriage to Jamie had been for me like the turning of a great key, each small turn setting in the intricate fall of tumblers within me. Bree had been able to turn that key as well, edging closer to the unlocking of the door of myself. But the final turn of the lock was frozen – until I had walked into the print shop in Edinburgh, and the mechanism had sprung free with a final, decisive click.”

— Diana Gabaldon

473. “I have loved ye since I saw you, Sassenach,” he said very quietly, holding my eyes with his own, bloodshot and lined with tiredness but very blue. “I will love ye forever. It doesna matter if ye sleep with the whole English army – well, no,” he corrected himself, “it would matter, but it wouldna stop me loving you.”

— Diana Gabaldon

474. “The simple act of writing Fraser’s name had given him a sense of connexion, and he realized that the desperate need for such connexion was what had driven him to write it.”

— Diana Gabaldon

475. “Not then, at least, because Claire had met her – would meet her? Earlier? Later? She hadn’t died, but was she dead? She must be now, mustn’t she, and yet – damn this twistiness! How could he even think about it coherently?”

— Diana Gabaldon

476. “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. Harking to the call of a kindred spirit, Frank at once settled down to the mating dance of academe, and they were soon neck-deep in archetypes and the parallels between ancient superstitions and modern religions. I shrugged and made my own way through the crowd to the bar and back, a large brandy-and-splash in each hand.”

— Diana Gabaldon

477. “Christ, was he going to die in public, in a pleasure garden, in the company of a sodomite spy dressed like a rooster?”

— Diana Gabaldon

478. “The words were before him, and yet I thought he wasn’t reading them from the paper, but from the pages of his memory, from the open book of his heart.”

— Diana Gabaldon

479. “Och, I want them frightened of me, Sassenach. It’s the only way I’ll have a chance of bringing them out of it alive.”

— Diana Gabaldon

480. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

481. “If either of them stops shouting long enough to hear the other, they’ll be hurting each other’s feelings.”

— Diana Gabaldon

482. “The sins of the fathers,” I murmured to myself. “The sins of the fathers shall not be visited upon the children.”

— Diana Gabaldon

483. “Papist, and whether I found the word of God any comfort or not, at least I could compare my troubles with Job’s.” He laughed. “Oddly enough, it was some comfort. Our Lord had to put up wi’ being scourged too; and I could reflect that at least I wasna going to be hauled out and crucified.”

— Diana Gabaldon

484. “Here we stopped, turning our horses over to the attention of a hostler, who moved so slowly as to seem ossified.”

— Diana Gabaldon

485. “But you are not God, and there are limits to what you can expect of yourself.”

— Diana Gabaldon

486. “Colum’s response came in a cutting tone. “And while I’ve seldom found cause to thank the Lord, perhaps he’s done better by me than I’ve thought. I’ve heard it said often enough that a man’s brain stops workin’ when his cock’s standin’, and now I think maybe I believe it.”

— Diana Gabaldon

487. “Shell shock, they said in the First World War. Battle fatigue, in the Second. It’s what happens when you live through things you shouldn’t have been able to live through and can’t reconcile that knowledge with the fact that you did.”

— Diana Gabaldon

488. “No hay respuestas, sino elecciones.”

— Diana Gabaldon

489. “I shook so that it was some time before I realized that he was shaking too, and for the same reason. I don’t know how long we sat there on the dusty floor, crying in each others arms with the longing of twenty years spilling down our faces.”

— Diana Gabaldon

490. “I bent to pick up the dirk. “Serve you right if I did,” I remarked. “Cocky bastard.” The grin visible beneath the crook of his arm widened still further. “Sassenach?” I stopped, dirk still in my hand. “What?” “I’ll die a happy man.”

— Diana Gabaldon

491. “Aye, I ken fine how strong women are,” he said quietly. “And you’re strong enough for what must be done, m’ annsachd – believe me.”

— Diana Gabaldon

492. “Is it usual, what it is between us when I touch you?”

— Diana Gabaldon

493. “Sometimes our best actions result in things that are most regrettable. And yet you could not have acted otherwise.”

— Diana Gabaldon

494. “A man’s life had to have more purpose than only to feed himself each day.”

— Diana Gabaldon

495. “Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed.”

— Diana Gabaldon

496. “Men are made in God’s image, or so I am told. Likewise that we differ from the animals in having reason. Reason, therefore, must plainly be a characteristic of the Almighty, quod erat demonstrandum. Is it reasonable, then, to create men whose very nature – clearly constructed and defined by yourself – is inimical to your own laws and must lead inevitably to destruction? Whatever would be the point of that? Does it not strike you as a most capricious notion – to say nothing of being wasteful?”

— Diana Gabaldon

497. “Wakefield’s not my own name, see; the Reverend gave it me when he adopted me. He was my mother’s uncle – when my parents were killed in the War, he took me to live with him. But my own name is MacKenzie.”

— Diana Gabaldon

498. “Don’t cry, Sassenach,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him.”

— Diana Gabaldon

499. “Is thee afraid of me, Rachel?” he whispered. “I am,” she whispered back, and closed her hand on his wounded shoulder, lightly but hard enough for him to feel the hurt of it. “And I am afraid for thee, as well. But there are things I fear much more than death – and to be without thee is what I fear most.”

— Diana Gabaldon

500. “Being in a state of grace is all very well, but I imagine even Joan of Arc had qualms when they lit the first brand.”

— Diana Gabaldon