Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “It may,” the deeper voice agreed. “It may rain straight up tomorrow instead of down, as well. That doesna mean I’ll stand waiting at the stairhead wi’ my wee bucket turned upside down.”

— Diana Gabaldon

303. “Hal swore in German behind him. He must have reached the part about the rifles; German oaths were reserved for the most stringent occasions, French being used for minor things like a burnt dinner, and Latin for formal insults committed to paper. Minnie wouldn’t let either Hal or John swear in English in the house, not wanting the boys to acquire low habits. John could have told her it was too late for such caution but didn’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

304. “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

305. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

307. “Aye, lass, courage like that is uncommon rare. It wasna ignorance, mind; he’d just seen two men flogged and he knew the same was coming to him. It’s just he had made up his mind there was no help for it. Boldness in battle is nothing out of the way for a Scotsman, ye ken, but to face down fear in cold blood is rare in any man.”

— Diana Gabaldon

308. “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

309. “And it was, as Dougal explained, convenient to the pillory, a homely wooden contraption that stood on a small stone plinth in the center of the square, adjacent to the wooden stake used – with thrifty economy of purpose – as whipping post, maypole, flagstaff and horse tether, depending upon requirements.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

311. “A mark on one arm like the one I bore. Here, in this time, the mark of sorcery, the mark of a magus. The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

313. “Hell was full of clocks, he was sure of it. There was no torment, after all, that could not be exacerbated by a contemplation of time passing. The large case clock at the end of the corridor had a particularly penetrating tick-tock, audiable above and through all the noises of the house. It seemed to Lord John Grey to echo his own heartbeats, each one a step on the road towards death.”

— Diana Gabaldon

314. “The dog would run a few steps toward the house, circle once or twice as though unable to decide what to do next, then run back into the wood, turn, and run again toward the house, all the while whining with agitation, tail low and wavering. “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ,” I said. “Bloody Timmy’s in the well!” I.”

— Diana Gabaldon

315. “You can’t make a horse do anything. You see what he’s going to do and then you tell him to do that, and he thinks it’s your idea, so next time you tell him something, he’s more likely to do what you tell him.”

— Diana Gabaldon

316. “Well, the Church does teach that self-abuse is a sin, but my father said he thought that if it came to a choice between abusin’ yourself or some poor woman, a decent man might choose to make the sacrifice.”

— Diana Gabaldon

317. “I have a gift for you too,” I said suddenly to Jamie. He turned toward me and his hand slid, large and sure, over the plane of my still-flat stomach.”

— Diana Gabaldon

318. “Probably from Norse roots. There’s a lot of the Norse influence round here, and all the way up the coast to the West. Some of the place names are Norse, you know, not Gaelic at all.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

320. “He was not afraid to die with her, by fire or any other way – only to live without her.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

322. “My God, he thought, I’m going to die before I’ve been born.”

— Diana Gabaldon

323. “A man should pay tribute to your body,” he said softly... “For you are beautiful, and that is your right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

324. “It wasn’t a very.”

— Diana Gabaldon

325. “Marketing with a small baby was more like a ninety-minute expedition into Darkest Borneo, requiring massive amounts of equipment and tremendous expenditures of energy.”

— Diana Gabaldon

326. “I listen,” she said simply. “To what folk say – and what they don’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

327. “The pressure of events was increasing, day by day, and he could feel responsibility wrapped like a strangling vine about his spinal cord, reaching eager fingers into the base of his skull.”

— Diana Gabaldon

328. “It is for this reason that a scientist constructs hypotheses – suggestions for the cause of an observation. But a hypothesis must never be confused with an explanation – with proof.”

— Diana Gabaldon

329. “The small, homely scar of a smallpox vaccination. Rain.”

— Diana Gabaldon

330. “Until we two be burned to ashes.”

— Diana Gabaldon

331. “He was right, of course. Bloody man, he was almost always right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

332. “Money is a good bridle, but a weak rein.”

— Diana Gabaldon

333. “I had never deflowered anyone before.”

— Diana Gabaldon

334. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

336. “When I asked my da how ye knew which was the right woman, he told me when the time came, I’d have no doubt. And I didn’t. When I woke in the dark under that tree on the road to Leoch, with you sitting on my chest, cursing me for bleeding to death, I said to myself ‘Jamie Fraser, for all ye canna see what she looks like, and for all she weights as much as a good draft horse, this is the woman.”

— Diana Gabaldon

337. “It wasn’t the risk,” I said, flicking my toes at a big black-and-white splotched carp. “Or not entirely. It was – well, it was partly fear, but mostly it was that I – I couldn’t leave Jamie.” I shrugged helplessly. “I – simply couldn’t.”

— Diana Gabaldon

338. “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

339. “He said the truth is the truth, and people should take responsibility for their own actions, which is right.”

— Diana Gabaldon

340. “Getting up once in the dark to go adventuring is a lark. Twice in two days smacks of masochism.”

— Diana Gabaldon

341. “I understood very well just then, why it is that men measure time. They wish to fix a moment, in the vain hope that doing so will keep it from departing.”

— Diana Gabaldon

342. “Your aunt’s a handsome woman, Fraser, but she could freeze the ballocks off the King o’ Japan, and she wanted to.”

— Diana Gabaldon

343. “That Cherry Bounce must be good stuff.”

— Diana Gabaldon

344. “But the years between now and then had been hard ones – and compassion was a soft emotion, easily eroded by circumstance.”

— Diana Gabaldon

345. “I’ll leave it to you, Sassenach,” he said dryly, “to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”

— Diana Gabaldon

346. “I glanced upward once, to see Brianna glowing, still smiling from ear to ear. Jamie was behind her, also smiling, his cheeks wet with tears. He said something to her in husky Gaelic, and brushing the hair away from her neck, leaned forward and kissed her gently, just behind the ear.”

— Diana Gabaldon

347. “Does he – is he one who knows what he is, do you think?” Claire’s hands stilled, the clanking pestle falling silent. “Oh, yes,” she said. “He knows.” “A laird? Is that what you’d call it?” Her mother hesitated, thinking. “No,” she said at last. She took up the pestle and began to grind again. The fragrance of dried marjoram filled the room like incense. “He’s a man,” she said, “and that’s no small thing to be.”

— Diana Gabaldon

348. “He came toward us, looking worried. As the birth grew closer, we had both been edgy; Frank irritable and myself terrified, having no idea what might happen between us, with the appearance of Jamie Fraser’s child. But when the nurse had taken Brianna from her bassinet and handed her to Frank, with the words “Here’s Daddy’s little girl,” his face had grown blank, and then – looking down at the tiny face, perfect as a rosebud – gone soft with wonder. Within a week, he had been hers, body and soul.”

— Diana Gabaldon

349. “In that case, maybe we shouldn’t be disturbing you,” said a soft American voice. “Oh, I forgot,” said Claire, half-turning to the girl who had stood out of sight in the corner of the porch. “Roger Wakefield – my daughter, Brianna.”

— Diana Gabaldon

350. “I’m not sure that religion was constructed with time travelers in mind.” Buck’s brows rose at that. “Constructed?” he echoed, surprised. “Who builds God?”

— Diana Gabaldon