"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."

"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."

"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."

"At the best of times, Father Bain's face resembled a clenched fist."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"He reached out a long arm and drew me in, holding me close against him. I put my arms around him and felt the quiver of his muscles, exhausted, and the sheer hard strength still in him, that would hold him up, no matter how tired he might be. We stood quite still for some time, my cheek against his chest and his face against my hair, drawing strength from each other for whatever might come next. Being married."

"It wasn't a thing I had consciously missed, but having it now reminded me of the joy of it; that drowsy intimacy in which a man's body is accessible to you as your own, the strange shapes and textures of it like a sudden extension of your own limbs."

"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."

"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."

"All loss is one, and one loss becomes all, a single death is the key to the gate that bars memory."

"For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary."

"He wasn't a whole person any longer, but only half of something not yet made."

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

"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."

"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 some last faint witness to the glory of what was."

"Intimacy and romance are not synonymous."

"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."

"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."

"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 heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I've served ye well."

"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."

"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 with his life. I love you forever, Brianna. I know whose child you truly are. With all my love, Dad."

"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."

"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 tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men."

"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."

"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 and the light, and when both and neither surround you."

"Sitting and waiting is one of the most miserable occupations known to man - not that it usually is known to men, women do it much more often."

"You're beautiful to me, Jamie, I said softly, at last. "So beautiful, you break my heart."

"Watch a good movie sometime without reference to what's happening but only with attention to how it was photographed; you'll see the change of focus-zoom in, pan out, close-up on face, fade to black, open from above-easily. You want to do that in what you write; it's one of the things that keep people's eyes on the page, though they're almost never conscious of it."

"One of the general patterns of good (i.e., striking and memorable) writing is the effect of repetition. If you use a certain element-a plot device, an image, a noticeable phrase-once, readers may or may not notice it consciously, but it doesn't disturb the flow of their reading. If you use that element twice, they won't notice it consciously-but they will notice it subconsciously, and it will add to the resonance of the writing or to their sense of depth and involvement (and if it's a plot device, it will heighten the dramatic tension). But if you use that element three times, everybody will notice it the third time you do it."

"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."

"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."

"I stagger out of bed, take the dogs outside, and then I'll get a Diet Coke and a couple of dog biscuits and go upstairs. By the time I've consumed my Diet Coke and had a quick run through the morning email and Twitter feed, I will probably be compos mentis enough to work."

"Gentle he would be, denied he would not."

"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."

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