Top 500 Diana Gabaldon Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “But the years between now and then had been hard ones – and compassion was a soft emotion, easily eroded by circumstance.”

— Diana Gabaldon

352. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

354. “Twilight was coming on, and so was a storm. In the eerie light beneath the clouds, even the thoroughly modern houses along the road looked as ancient and as sinister as the weathered Pictish stone that stood a hundred feet away, guarding the crossroads it had marked for a thousand years. It seemed a good night to be inside with the shutters fastened.”

— Diana Gabaldon

355. “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.” He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes. “I said ‘Lord, if I’ve never had courage in my life before, let me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.’ ” He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me. “Hardest thing I ever did, Sassenach.”

— Diana Gabaldon

356. “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

357. “Damn ye, woman! Will ye never do as you’re told?” “Probably not,” I said meekly.”

— Diana Gabaldon

358. “Hello,” I said softly, one hand over the butterfly wings that beat inside me.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

360. “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

361. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

363. “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

364. “Ye must always give money for a new blade,” he explained, half smiling. “So it kens ye for its owner, and willna turn on ye.”

— Diana Gabaldon

365. “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

366. “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

367. “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

368. “I felt at once horribly vulnerable and yet completely safe.”

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

373. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

376. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

379. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

381. “He was generally aware that he had been blessed in her beauty; even in her usual homespun, knee-deep in mud from her garden, or stained and fierce with the blood of her calling, the curve of her bones spoke to his own marrow, and those whisky eyes could make him drunk with a glance. Besides, the mad collieshangie of her hair made him laugh.”

— Diana Gabaldon

382. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

385. “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

386. “Pleasure?” Her voice rose behind me, incredulous. “Ye mean some women like it?”

— Diana Gabaldon

387. “Mm. You’d forgotten how to say anything except ‘I love you,’ but you said that a lot.”

— Diana Gabaldon

388. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

391. “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

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

— Diana Gabaldon

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

— Diana Gabaldon

394. “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

395. “There was nothing frightening about the dead man; there never is. No matter how ugly the manner in which a man dies, it’s only the presence of a suffering human soul that is horrifying; once gone, what is left is only an object.”

— Diana Gabaldon

396. “I mean to take my time about it, aye?”

— Diana Gabaldon

397. “Father to son. And with that thought, all the disconnected, fragmentary, scattered fancies in his brain dropped suddenly into a single, vivid image: Jamie Fraser, seen from the back, looking over the horses in the paddock at Helwater. And beside him, standing on a rail and clinging to a higher one, William, Earl of Ellesmere. The alert cock of their heads, the set of their shoulders, the wide stance – just the same.”

— Diana Gabaldon

398. “I’m not entirely sure the Scots realize they lost that one,” I interrupted, sitting up and trying to subdue my hair. “I distinctly heard the barman at that pub last night refer to us as Sassenachs.” “Well, why not?” said Frank equably. “It only means ‘Englishman,’ after all, or at worst, ‘outlander,’ and we’re all of that.”

— Diana Gabaldon

399. “I felt simultaneously wonderful and wretched, and didn’t know from moment to moment which feeling was uppermost.”

— Diana Gabaldon

400. “Because, Sassenach,” he said, very dryly indeed, “when ye’re a man, a good bit of what ye have to do is to draw up lines and fight other folk who come over them. Your enemies, your tenants, your children – your wife. Ye canna always just strike them or take a strap to them, but when ye can, at least it’s clear to everyone who’s in charge.”

— Diana Gabaldon