For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary

No. Ye loved him. I canna hold it against either of you that ye mourn him. And it gives me some comfort to know …” He hesitated, and I reached up to smooth the rumpled...

The colors of living things begin to fade with the last breath, and the soft, springy skin and supple muscle rot within weeks. But the bones sometimes remain, faithful echoes of the shape, to bear...

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...

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

Eres sangre de mi sangre y huesos de mis huesos.Te doy mi cuerpo para que los dos seamos uno.Te doy mi espíritu para que los dos seamos uno.

Ian, man, I didna tell ye because I didna wish to lose you too. My brother was gone, and my father. I didna mean to lose my own heart’s blood as well. For you are...

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

Like plumbing, medicine is a profession where you learn early on not to put your fingers in your mouth.

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...

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

I know what it felt . . . like when I . . . thought you were dead, and-” A small gasp for breath, and her eyes locked on his. “And I wouldn’t do that...

One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.

I’ve seen women-and men too, sometimes-as canna bear the sound of their own thoughts, and they maybe dinna make such good matches with those who can.

If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.

For several days, I slept. Whether this was a necessary part of physical recovery, or a stubborn retreat from waking reality, I do not know, but I woke only reluctantly to take a little food,...

Still, he was pleased to know that he could recall so much of the play and passed the rest of the journey pleasantly in reciting lines to himself, being careful not to snort.

Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.

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...

The law’s a necessary evil–we canna be doing without it–but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience?

I have two brain cells left, and one of them is busy reminding me to buy toilet paper.

Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They’re one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi’ the man who crushed his enemy’s...

There were moments, of course. Those small spaces in time, too soon gone, when everything seems to stand still, and existence is balanced on a perfect point, like the moment of change between the dark...

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...

Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger’s touch. But when you live with them and love them, you...

…seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.

He had crossed the room with no notion what he might say or do – he had no knowledge of the language of condolence, no skill at social small talk; his metier was business and...

I stood still, vision blurring, and in that moment, I heard my heart break. It was a small, clean sound, like the snapping of a flower’s stem.

True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.

Look, pick it up, open it anywhere and read three pages. If you can put it down again, I’ll pay you a dollar.

So beautiful, you break my heart.

Brave’ covers everything from complete insanity and bloody disregard of other people’s lives – generals tend to go in for that sort – to drunkenness, foolhardiness, and outright idiocy – to the sort of thing...

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to...

Do you really think we’ll ever–“”I do,” he said with certainty, not letting me finish. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. “I know it, Sassenach, and so do you. You were meant to be...

Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own . . . and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered...

Oh, aye, Sassenach. I am your master . . . and you’re mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.

I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in...

Nobody had ever told me how to do these things, … I didn’t want anyone giving me advice until I had it all figured out on my own.

Catholics don’t believe in divorce. We do believe in murder. There’s always Confession, after all.–Brianna Fraser to Roger MacKenzie

I put back my head, looking up at the deep black sky swimming with hot stars. If you knew they were really balls of flaming gas, you could imagine them as Van Gogh saw them,...

If I die,” he whispered in the dark, “dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.

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...

Jamie,” I said, “how, exactly, do you decide whether you’re drunk?”Aroused by my voice, he swayed alarmingly to one side, but caught himself on the edge of the mantelpiece. His eyes drifted around the room,...

And I mean to hear ye groan like that again. And to moan and sob, even though you dinna wish to, for ye canna help it. I mean to make you sigh as though your...

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

[Claire travels in time. And while she and Jamie do fall in love, their story is not so much the stuff of sighs and moans (well, not just that anyway) as it is a grand...

Ïf ye’ve ever the privelege of seeing a woman in her skin, gentlemen,”he said, looking over his shoulder toward the door and lowering his voice confidentially, ÿe’ll observe that the hair there grows in the...

Intimacy and romance are not synonymous.

God, don’t laugh!” Jamie said, alarmed. “I didna mean to make ye laugh! Christ, Jenny will kill me if ye cough up a lung and die out here!

Your mother said that Fraser sent her back to me, knowing that I would protect her–and you. … And like him, perhaps I send you back, knowing—as he knew of me–that he will protect you...