"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."

"If there's true emotional content in a situation between characters, all you do is reveal it."

"Nothing is lost, Sassenach; only changed.""That's the first law of thermodynamics," I said, wiping my nose."No," he said. "That's faith."

"But just then, for that fraction of time, it seems as though all things are possible. You can look across the limitations of your own life, and see that they are really nothing. In that moment when time stops, it is as though you know you could undertake any venture, complete it and come back to yourself, to find the world unchanged, and everything just as you left it a moment before. And it's as though knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary."

"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'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."

"As a rule of thumb, four consecutive lines of dialogue is about as much as you want to have without a tag."

"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."

"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."

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

"Reading is of course dry work, and further refreshment was called for and consumed."

"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."

"He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances."

"Pointing out the emotion in a scene is like laughing at your own jokes."

"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."

"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."

"Still less could I be afraid of those ghosts who touch my thoughts in passing. Any library is filled with them. I can take a book from dusty shelves, and be haunted by the thoughts of one long dead, still lively as ever in their winding sheet of words."

"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."

"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 that will make a man sweat and tremble and throw up . . . and go and do what he thinks he has to do anyway."

"You forget the life you had before, after awhile. Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string. Cut the knot and they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners never to be found again. So you move on, and eventually you forget what the pearls even looked like. At least, you try."

"It was one of those strange moments that came to him rarely, but never left. A moment that stamped itself on heart and brain, instantly recallable in every detail, for all of his life. There was no telling what made these moments different from any other, though he knew them when they came. He had seen sights more gruesome and more beautiful by far, and been left with no more than a fleeting muddle of their memory. But these-- the still moments, as he called them to himself-- they came with no warning, to print a random image of the most common things inside his brain, indelible."

"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."

"Don't let characters talk pointlessly-they only talk if there's something to say."

"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."

"For months, people have been asking my views about the Scottish independence referendum, and I've been saying, 'It's not my country; I don't live here. Much as I love Scotland, I think it would be inappropriate to express a personal opinion regarding Scottish politics'."

"That's the best thing I can think of. Having a good hold on your arse always makes me feel steady."

"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."

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

"I had not slept with many men other than my husband, but I noticed before that to sleep, actually sleep with someone did give this sense of intimacy, as though your dreams had flowed out of you to mingle with his and fold you both in a blanket of unconsciousness knowing. A throwback of some kind, I thought. In older, more primitive times, it was an act of trust to sleep in the presence of another person. If the trust was mutual, simple sleep could bring you closer together than joining the bodies."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"Good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids."

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

"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 dearer to me even than home and family, love.'She cast a lopsided smile at Jamie. 'And that's saying quite a bit."

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

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

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

"Jamie's viewpoint is expressed almost entirely in metaphor: If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle. He's using physical language, but he isn't talking about the physical details of the situation. Claire alludes to her emotion and shows it by her actions, but Jamie is thinking directly in pure emotions."

"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, without difficulty . . . and looking into that illuminated void, you understood why people have always looked up into the sky when talking to God. You need to feel the immensity of something very much bigger than yourself, and there it is - immeasurably vast, and always near at hand. Covering you."

"Roger speaking to Brianna: It's too important. You don't forget having a dad."You do remember your father?"No. I remember yours."

"Its appearance was greeted with cries of rapture, and following a brief struggle over possesion of the volume, William rescued it before it should be torn to pieces, but allowed himself to be induced to read some of the passages aloud, his dramatic rendering being greeted by wolflike howls of enthusiasim and hails of live pits."

"Time does not really exist for mothers, with regard to their children. It does not matter greatly how old the child is-in the blink of an eye, a mother can see the child again as they were when they were born, when they learned how to walk, as they were at any age-at any time, even when the child is fully grown or a parent themselves."

"He has cat blood, I reflected sourly, no doubt that was how he managed to sneak up on me in the darkness."

"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."

"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 opened his eyes to look on her face, to fix it in his mind forever."

"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."

"Almost everybody understands that you have to have something at stake for a story to be good."