Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2026 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

353. “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

354. “But then, I didn’t think I’d tell them you were here.” “What makes you think they don’t know?” I asked, beginning to feel rather hollow, despite my earlier resolve to brazen it out. I cast a quick glance at the window, but.”

— Diana Gabaldon

355. “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

356. “For a moment, I saw him as he had looked the morning I married him. Duine uasal was what he looked, a man of worth. But the bold face above the lace was the same, older now, but wiser with it – yet the tilt of his shining head and the set of the wide, firm mouth, the slanted clear cat-eyes that looked into my own, were just the same. Here was a man who had always known his worth.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

359. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

362. “An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie’s heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed.”

— Diana Gabaldon

363. “Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.”

— Diana Gabaldon

Featured in: Romance Quotes

364. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

366. “Cows?” he asked, “Was it really cows, or was I dreaming?”

— Diana Gabaldon

367. “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

368. “It’s not what’s happened or what’s about to happen; what’s important is the sense of emotional uncertainty between the characters and the delicacy of the mutual trust being established.”

— Diana Gabaldon

369. “A general cry of “What book? What book? Let us see this famous book!”

— Diana Gabaldon

370. “I can hear. Hear them. It. Don’t you hear?” It was a struggle to speak, to form coherent thoughts. The call here was different; not the beehive sound of Craigh na Dun, but a hum like the vibration of the air following the striking of a great bell. I could feel it ringing in the long bones of my arms, echoing through pectoral girdle and spine. Jamie.”

— Diana Gabaldon

371. “The tooth had belonged to a gentleman named Murphy from Ellis Ward, the one we lived in. I say “had belonged” because I had the badly broken and infected bicuspid out of Mr. Murphy’s head before he could have said Jack Robinson, though he was in such pain that he could barely recall his own name, let alone Jack’s. Mr.”

— Diana Gabaldon

372. “How was yer first time, Jamie? Did ye bleed?” shouted Rupert.”

— Diana Gabaldon

373. “And the light was gone, and the air failed them. And so they lay down in the dark to die.”

— Diana Gabaldon

374. “And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.”

— Diana Gabaldon

375. “It doesna matter how many things ye do on a farm, there’s always more than ye can do. A wonder the place doesna rise up about my ears and swallow me, like Jonah and the whale.”

— Diana Gabaldon

376. “We come and go from mystery and, in between, we try to forget.”

— Diana Gabaldon

377. “I could know ye all my life, I think, and always love you.”

— Diana Gabaldon

378. “I’ve spent more than twenty years looking for answers, Roger, and I can tell you only one thing: There aren’t any answers, only choices. I’ve made a number of them myself, and no one can tell me whether they were right or wrong.”

— Diana Gabaldon

379. “Often people who are very ill, but are near their birthday, seem to wait until it’s passed before dying. I.”

— Diana Gabaldon

380. “His heart was beating very erratically; perhaps it would conveniently stop. He waited for a moment to allow it to do this if it liked, but it went on cheerfully thumping away.”

— Diana Gabaldon

381. “Any piece of good music is in essence a love song.”

— Diana Gabaldon

382. “Roger lay in the dust of the road, bruised, filthy, and starving, with a woman trembling and weeping against his chest, now and then giving him a small thump with her fist. He had never felt happier in his life.”

— Diana Gabaldon

383. “Oh, foisted, is it?” cried Mr. Ormiston in righteous indignation. “Such a word! And if it means what I think it does, young man, you should get down on your knees and thank God for such foistingness!”

— Diana Gabaldon

384. “It’s a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.”

— Diana Gabaldon

385. “He came through the front door just as I barreled into the hallway, and grabbed me round the waist, kissing me with sun-dusty enthusiasm and sandpaper whiskers.”

— Diana Gabaldon

386. “Well, of course he does, Sassenach,” Jamie said, reaching for another slice of toast. “He left her his dog.”

— Diana Gabaldon

387. “I didna say I wanted an apology, did I? If I recall aright, what I said was ‘Bite me again.”

— Diana Gabaldon

388. “Yes, but – ” I began. “So” – he said authoritatively, holding up a finger to hush me – “if you have been deprived of your earlier life, perhaps it is only that God has seen fit to bless you with another, that may be richer and fuller.”

— Diana Gabaldon

389. “The ninth Earl of Ellesmere had his chin thrust out as far as it would go, but the defiant look in his eye was tempered with a certain doubt as he intercepted Jamie’s cold blue gaze. Jamie set the horse’s hoof down slowly, just as slowly stood up, and drawing himself to his full height of six feet four, put his hands on his hips, looked down at the Earl, three feet six, and said, very softly, “No.”

— Diana Gabaldon

390. “I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eighteenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.”

— Diana Gabaldon

391. “I, ah, I wasn’t expecting – ” I said idiotically. Brianna gave me a grin to match her father’s, eyes bright as stars and damp with happiness. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” “What?” said Jamie blankly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

392. “I stood in front of him in nothing but my shoes and gartered rose-silk stockings.”

— Diana Gabaldon

393. “Was a struggle to choose one’s own destiny less worthwhile than the necessity to stop a great evil?”

— Diana Gabaldon

394. “Do not forget to entertain strangers,” Buck said in the same language, “for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

— Diana Gabaldon

395. “Dr. Stern told me that the wilderness of Carolina is alive wi’ fierce creatures – bears and wildcats and wicked panthers – and a great foul thing the Indians call a skunk!”

— Diana Gabaldon

396. “Ye ken that, don’t ye? That they can only be what they are because you and I are what we are?”

— Diana Gabaldon

397. “Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.”

— Diana Gabaldon

398. “My love,” he whispered. “Oh, my love. I do want ye so.”

— Diana Gabaldon

399. “Jealousy had nothing to do with logic.”

— Diana Gabaldon

400. “He pressed me firmly to him, and I could feel that he was more than ready to get on with the business at hand. With some surprise, I realized that I was ready too. In fact, whether it was the result of the late hour, the wine, his own attractiveness, or simple deprivation, I wanted him quite badly.”

— Diana Gabaldon