Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death the key to the gate that bars memory.”

— Diana Gabaldon

252. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

254. “Alive and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us.”

— Diana Gabaldon

255. “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

256. “I’ve heard it said that a man’s reach must exceed his grasp – or what’s a heaven for?”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

258. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

260. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

262. “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

263. “Some people can leave their bodies and travel miles away,” she said, staring meditatively at the page. “Other people see them out wandering, and recognize them, and ye can bloody prove they were really tucked up safe in bed at the time. I’ve seen the records, all the eyewitness testimony. Some people have stigmata ye can see and touch – I’ve seen one. But not everybody. Only certain people.” She.”

— Diana Gabaldon

264. “He was overcome with a sudden sense of premonition, though he did not believe in premonition. He felt things in motion around him, things that he did not understand and could not control, things settling of themselves into an ordained and appointed position, like the revolving spheres of his father’s orrery – and he wished to protest this state of affairs, but could not.”

— Diana Gabaldon

265. “Damn you, Sassenach!” his voice said, from a very great distance. His voice was choked with passion. “Dam you! I swear if ye die on me, I’ll kill you!”

— Diana Gabaldon

266. “Does it ever stop, Claire? The wanting?”

— Diana Gabaldon

267. “Healing comes from the healed; not from the physician.”

— Diana Gabaldon

268. “It’s always better if they see. Then they don’t imagine things. So I didn’t imagine, I remembered.”

— Diana Gabaldon

269. “He said the greatest thing in a man’s life is to lie wi’ a woman he loves,” he said softly. He smiled at me, eyes blue as the sky overhead. “He was right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

270. “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.”

— Diana Gabaldon

271. “Claire knew the flavor of solitude. It was cold as spring water, and not all could drink it; for some it was not refreshment, but mortal chill.”

— Diana Gabaldon

272. “When you kissed me like that well maybe you weren’t so sorry to be marrying me after all.”

— Diana Gabaldon

273. “There were a few faint echoes from the common room two floors below, and a brief flurry of noise and movement, but this served only to emphasize my own isolation.”

— Diana Gabaldon

274. “I was dead, my Sassenach – and yet all that time, I loved you.”

— Diana Gabaldon

275. “Lord, he’d said. Let me be enough. That prayer had lodged in my heart like an arrow when I’d heard it and thought he asked for help in doing what had to be done. But that wasn’t what he’d meant at all – and the realization of what he had meant split my heart in two. I took his face between my hands, and wished so much that I had his own gift, the ability to say what lay in my heart, in such a way that he would know. But I hadn’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

276. “Have you anything to say to me now, Madam?” he demanded. “Your wig is crooked,” I said, and closed my eyes again.”

— Diana Gabaldon

277. “I found the rooted silence, rushing stream, and rustling leaves balm to the spirit.”

— Diana Gabaldon

278. “Dangerous thing, infatuation.”

— Diana Gabaldon

279. “You are a rather remarkable woman,” he said at last, in a level tone. “Indeed,” I said, not looking up. “In what way?” He leaned back; I heard the rustle of his bedding. “You are neither circumspect nor circuitous. In fact, I don’t believe I have ever met anyone more devastatingly straightforward – male or female.” “Well, it’s not by choice,” I said. I came to the end of the thread and tucked it neatly into the ball. “I was born that way.” “So was I,” he said, very softly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

280. “Don’t be afraid,” he whispered into my hair. “There’s the two of us now.”

— Diana Gabaldon

281. “And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?”

— Diana Gabaldon

282. “He went on loving her,” she whispered, as much to herself as to anyone else. “He didn’t forget her.” “Of course he didna forget her.” She opened her eyes to see Ian’s long face and kind brown eyes six inches away. A broad work-worn hand rested on hers, warm and hard, a hand even larger than her own. “Neither did we,” he said.”

— Diana Gabaldon

283. “Then I laid my head upon his chest and gave my dreams up to his keeping.”

— Diana Gabaldon

284. “I thought of telling him that his own touch seared my skin and filled my veins with fire. But I was already alight and glowing like a brand. I closed my eyes and felt the kindling touch move to cheek and temple, ear and neck, and shuddered as his hands dropped to my waist and drew me close.”

— Diana Gabaldon

285. “She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.”

— Diana Gabaldon

286. “If ye were no longer there – or somewhere – ” he said very softly, “then the sun would no longer come up or go down.” He lifted my hand and kissed it, very gently. He laid it, closed around my ring, upon my chest, rose, and left.”

— Diana Gabaldon

287. “Sassenach, I’ve been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper – which I didna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children an I dinna like to flog men, and I’ve had to do both. I’ve two hundred English camped three miles away, and no idea what to do about them. I’m tired, I’m hungry, and I’m sore. If you’ve anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!”

— Diana Gabaldon

288. “No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

289. “Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way... but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.”

— Diana Gabaldon

290. “Scots have long memories, and they’re not the most forgiving of people.”

— Diana Gabaldon

291. “Maybe it was the result of gardening, that quiet sense of pleasure in touching growing things, the satisfaction of helping them thrive.”

— Diana Gabaldon

292. “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

293. “James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser.”

— Diana Gabaldon

294. “It was Jamie’s fear that he would lose her – that she would go, swing out into a dark and solitary space without him, unless he could somehow bind her to him, keep her with him. But, Christ, what a risk to take – with a woman so shocked and brutalized, how could he risk it?”

— Diana Gabaldon

295. “I am what God has made me, and must deal with the Times in which He has placed me.”

— Diana Gabaldon

296. “It starts out the same, but then, after a moment,” he said, speaking softly, “suddenly it’s as though I’ve a living flame in my arms.” His touch grew firmer, outlining my lips and caressing the line of my jaw. “And I want only to throw myself into it and be consumed.”

— Diana Gabaldon

297. “Do women hold back the evolution of such things as freedom and other social ideals, out of fear for themselves or their children? Or do they in fact inspire such things – and the risks required to reach them – by providing the things worth fighting for? Not merely fighting to defend, either, but to propel forward, for a man wanted more for his children than he would ever have.”

— Diana Gabaldon

298. “I’m none so brave as I was before, ken?” he said very softly. “Not brave enough to live without ye anymore.”

— Diana Gabaldon

299. “A man killed with a musket was just as dead as one killed with a mortar. It was just that the mortar killed impersonally, destroying dozens of men, while the musket was fired by one man who could see the eyes of the one he killed. That made it murder, it seemed to me, not war. How many men to make a war? Enough, perhaps, so they didn’t really have to see each other?”

— Diana Gabaldon

300. “I don’t plot the books out ahead of time, I don’t plan them. I don’t begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don’t work with an outline and I don’t work in a straight line.”

— Diana Gabaldon