For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary
Ye are Blood of my Blood, and Bone of my Bone,I give ye my Body, that we Two might be One.I give ye my Spirit, ’til our Life shall be Done.
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 or no, if ye want me or nay. Mine, and I wilna let ye go.
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.
Oh, aye, Sassenach. I am your master . . . and you’re mine. Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.
To see the years touch ye gives me joy”, he whispered, “for it means that ye live.
But I talk to you as I talk to my own soul,” he said, turning me to face him. He reached up and cupped my cheek, fingers light on my temple.”And, Sassenach,” he whispered, “your face is my heart.
It would ha’ been a good deal easier, if ye’d only been a witch.
I want to take ye to bed. In my bed. And I mean to spend the rest of the day thinking what to do wit ye once I got ye there. So wee Archie can just go and play at marbles with his bollucks, aye?
Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.””That’s the first law of thermodynamics,” I said, wiping my nose.”No,” he said. “That’s faith.
Overall, the library held a hushed exultation, as though the cherished volumes were all singing soundlessly within their covers.
A general cry of “What book? What book? Let us see this famous book!
Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed.
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 heard you went to Ireland…I haven’t seen it in many years. Is it still green then, and beautiful?Wet as a bath sponge and mud to the knees but, aye, it was green enough.
I’ll tell ye, Sassenach; if ever I feel the need to change my manner of employment, I dinna think I’ll take up attacking women – it’s a bloody hard way to make a living.
Once you’ve chosen a man, don’t try to change him, I wrote, with more confidence. It can’t be done. More important — don’t let him try to change you. He can’t do it either, but men always try.
It’s always better if they see. Then they don’t imagine things. So I didn’t imagine, I remembered.
You’re beautiful to me, Jamie,” I said softly, at last. “So beautiful, you break my heart.
There’s a little trick called the Rule of Three: if you use any three of the five senses, it will make the scene immediately three-dimensional.
Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids
If you can’t look a line of dialogue in the face and say exactly why it’s there—take it out or change it.
Don’t go overboard in avoiding “said.” Basically, “said” is the default for dialogue, and a good thing, too; it’s an invisible word that doesn’t draw attention to itself.
You want to anchor the scene with physical details, but by and large it’s better to use sensual details rather than overtly sexual ones.
You don’t need to know the purpose as you write, but when you read over something you’ve written, you should be able to point to any given element—be that a line of dialogue, a descriptive phrase, a plot point—and say why it’s there.
As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag.
Don’t let characters talk pointlessly—they only talk if there’s something to say.
Dialogue doesn’t take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage.
Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes.
If there’s true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it.
Just as an effective advertisement or page layout includes a lot of white space, a powerful scene requires immense restraint. Show things as simply as possible.
Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good.
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 which it sprang.
Conflict and character are the heart of good fiction, and good mystery has both of those in spades.
All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory.
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.
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.
True, the body’s easily maimed, and the spirit can be crippled – yet there’s that in a man that is never destroyed.
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.
He has cat blood, I reflected sourly, no doubt that was how he managed to sneak up on me in the darkness.
The law’s a necessary evil–we canna be doing without it–but do ye not think it a poor substitute for conscience?
Would he ever come back? He wondered. The water filled his ears with its own rush, and he was comforted by the realization that, in fact, he never left.
And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?
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
For so many years, for so long, I have been so many things, so many different men. But here,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him, “here in the dark, with you… I have no name.
Nay, he needs a woman, not a girl. And Laoghaire will be a girl when she’s fifty.
Alive, and one. We are one, and while we love, death will never touch us. ‘The grave’s a fine and private place/ but none, I think, do there embrace.
Mo Nighean donn,” he whispered,” mo chridhe. My brown lass, my heart.”Come to me. Cover me. Shelter me. a bhean, heal me. Burn with me, as I burn for you.
I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rotting bull. I dinna understand myself.
Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim place within, where there was nothing but an aching grey blankness…
…knowing what o’clock it is gives ye the illusion that ye have some control over your circumstances.
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 old that one is, I thought.
If I die,” he whispered in the dark, “dinna follow me. The bairns will need ye. Stay for them. I can wait.
At the best of times, Father Bain’s face resembled a clenched fist.
Roger speaking to Brianna: It’s too important. You don’t forget having a dad.”You do remember your father?”No. I remember yours.
If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
…seeking refuge from a world in which huge and mysterious forces were let loose to destruction.
He wasn’t a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made.
That’s the best thing I can think of. Having a good hold on your arse always makes me feel steady.
You have lost your mind,”Jamie said coldly, the shock receding slightly. “Or I should think you had, if ye had one to lose.
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!
After all, I thought, what were days and weeks in the presence of eternity?
Like plumbing, medicine is a profession where you learn early on not to put your fingers in your mouth.
So now it’s space and time,” he said. “You ever watch Doctor Who on PBS?””All the time,” she said dryly, “on the BBC. And don’t think I wouldn’t sell my soul for a TARDIS.
He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.
Blessed are those who eat greens, for they shall keep their teeth. Blessed are those who wash their hands after wiping their arses, for they shall not sicken. Blessed are those who boil water, for they shall be called saviors of mankind.
It’s a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.
A peaceful refuge in which to rediscover each other, we thought,, not realizing that, while golf and fishing are Scotland’s most popular outdoor sports, gossip is the most popular indoor sport.
What underlies great science is what underlies great art, whether it is visual or written, and that is the ability to distinguish patterns out of chaos.
Mid-afternoon, I’ll go out and do the household errands, come home, do my gardening, go for an evening walk.