Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2026 Update)
Page 5 of 10

201. “Leaving me to plant the rest of the garlic, Mrs. Fitz sailed away like a galleon, young Alec bobbing in her wake. I worked contentedly through the morning, planting garlic, pinching back dead flower heads, digging out weeds and carrying on the gardener’s never-ending battle against snails, slugs, and similar pests. Here, though, the battle was waged bare-handed, with no assistance from chemical antipest compounds.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

203. “While my mind might object to being taken on a bare rock next to several sleeping soldiers, my body plainly considered itself the spoils of war and was eager to complete the formalities of surrender.”

— Diana Gabaldon

204. “Do ye want me to be a horse, a bear, or a dog?” “A hedgehog.” “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

205. “We stood wrapped in each other’s arms, taking comfort from our family below, yearning for the others we might never see again, at once at home and homeless, balanced on a knife edge of danger and uncertainty. But together.”

— Diana Gabaldon

206. “My parents would take my sister and me out for dinner now and then, and while waiting for the food to be served, would point out the oldest, most harried looking waitress in the place, saying sternly, “Be sure you get a good education, so you don’t have to do that when you’re fifty!”

— Diana Gabaldon

207. “The greatest burden lies in caring for those we cannot help.”

— Diana Gabaldon

208. “He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, “Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children.” Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her throught the veils of time.”

— Diana Gabaldon

209. “To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.”

— Diana Gabaldon

210. “I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday; not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I’d be strong enough to send ye away. I said, “Lord, if I’ve ever had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough and not fall to my knees and beg her to stay.”

— Diana Gabaldon

211. “BILIOUS HUMOURS.”

— Diana Gabaldon

212. “Please,” she said, “don’t mention Jamie Fraser to my daughter.”

— Diana Gabaldon

213. “I am deeply indebted to many people who have shared their love of and insights into these remarkable books with me over the years, none more than Jessica Matthews of George Mason University.”

— Diana Gabaldon

214. “I loved Frank... I loved him alot. But by that time, Jamie was my heart and the breath of my body. I couldn’t leave him. I couldn’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

215. “There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional.”

— Diana Gabaldon

216. “Idleness would have seemed not only a sign of moral decay, but an affront to the natural order of things.”

— Diana Gabaldon

217. “Stones of protection; amethyst, emerald, turquoise, lapis lazuli, and a male ruby.”

— Diana Gabaldon

218. “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. – Jamie.”

— Diana Gabaldon

219. “Claire. The name knifed across his heart with a pain that was more racking than anything his body had ever been called on to withstand.”

— Diana Gabaldon

220. “And a long time,” he said. “I am a jealous man, but not a vengeful one. I would take you from him, my Sassenach – but I wouldna take him from you.”

— Diana Gabaldon

221. “It was in a way a comforting idea; if there was all the time in the world, then the happenings of a given moment became less important.”

— Diana Gabaldon

222. “I relaxed my grip on the knife; she could hardly attack me with a lapful of goat.”

— Diana Gabaldon

223. “Pointless to spend too much time in planning, anyway, given the propensity of life to make sudden left-hand turns without warning.”

— Diana Gabaldon

224. “I’ve yet to see the auld woman believes in witches, nor the young one, neither. It’s men think there must be ill-wishes and magic in women, when it’s only the natural way of the creatures.”

— Diana Gabaldon

225. “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

226. “I could feel his heart beating against my ribs, and wanted nothing more than to stay there forever, not moving, not making love, just breathing the same air.”

— Diana Gabaldon

227. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

Featured in: Reading Quotes

228. “Well, my mother told me I’d be some lassie’s choice one fine day.” He reached down a hand and helped me up. “I told her,” he continued, “that I thought it was the man’s part to choose.” “And what did she say to that?” I asked. “She rolled her eyes and said ‘You’ll find out, my fine wee cockerel, you’ll find out.’ ” He laughed. “And so I have.”

— Diana Gabaldon

229. “For the moment, everything had disappeared: the church, the battle, the screams and shouts and the rumble of limber wheels along the rutted road through Freehold. There wasn’t anything but her and him, and he opened his eyes to look on her face, to fix it in his mind forever.”

— Diana Gabaldon

230. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

231. “I was born for you,” I simply said, and held out my arms to him.”

— Diana Gabaldon

232. “Scots have long memories, and they’re not the most forgiving of people. There’s a clan stone out there with the name of MacKenzie carved on it, and a good many of my relatives under it. I don’t feel quite so personal about it as some, but I haven’t forgotten either. – Roger MacKenzie Wakefield.”

— Diana Gabaldon

233. “While Fergus was possessed of dark good looks and a dashing manner that might well win a young girl’s heart, he lacked a few of the things that might appeal somewhat more to conservative Scottish parents, such as property, income, a left hand, and a last name.”

— Diana Gabaldon

234. “To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct.”

— Diana Gabaldon

235. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

Featured in: Romance Quotes

236. “Men hate things to change,” her mother had once casually told her. “Unless it’s their idea, of course. But you can make them think it is their idea, sometimes.”

— Diana Gabaldon

237. “A conclusion is simply the point at which you give up thinking. He gave up, and as he rose stiffly to his feet, found that a conclusion had indeed formed itself in his mind, much as a pearl forms inside an oyster.”

— Diana Gabaldon

238. “I am a Highlander,” Jamie said bleakly. He glanced once more at the far bank, where occasional glimpses of tartan showed through the mist, and then back. The shouting echoed from the fog. “And I am the sire of Americans.”

— Diana Gabaldon

239. “Lord that she might be safe. She and my children.”

— Diana Gabaldon

240. “Owls are keepers of the dead, but not just the dead. They’re messengers between worlds.”

— Diana Gabaldon

241. “All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death the key to the gate that bars memory.”

— Diana Gabaldon

242. “I knelt at Ellen’s feet, as I kneel now by yours, And I swore to her by the name o’ the threefold God, that I would follow ye always, to do your bidding, and guard your back, when ye became a man grown, and needing such service. Aye, lad. I do cherish ye as the son of my own loins.”

— Diana Gabaldon

243. “Superstition and sensation are always so much more appealing than truth and rationality. The.”

— Diana Gabaldon

244. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

245. “You’re real,” he whispered. I had thought him pale already. Now all vestiges of color drained from his face.”

— Diana Gabaldon

246. “For if you feel for me as i do for you – then I am asking you to tear out your heart and live without it.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

248. “It’s like a little fortress, where the most private part of you lives – maybe it’s your soul, maybe just that bit that makes you yourself and not anyone else.”

— Diana Gabaldon

249. “A sadist with a sense of humor was particularly dangerous.”

— Diana Gabaldon

250. “Often the best tool is the most dangerous. One doesn’t hesitate to use it on that account; one merely makes sure to take adequate precautions.”

— Diana Gabaldon