"The vivid memory of the woods had blossomed into a visceral longing for the Ridge, so immediate that I felt the ghost of my vanished house rise around me, a cold mountain wind thrumming past its walls, and thought that, if I reached down, I could feel Adso's soft gray fur under my fingers. I swallowed, hard."

"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."

"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!"

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

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

"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?"

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

"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."

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

"Mid-afternoon, I'll go out and do the household errands, come home, do my gardening, go for an evening walk."

"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."

"After all, I thought, what were days and weeks in the presence of eternity?"

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"A general cry of "What book? What book? Let us see this famous book!"

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

"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."

"It's always better if they see. Then they don't imagine things. So I didn't imagine, I remembered."

"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."

"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, falling at once back into a stupor of oblivion, as though the small, warm weight of broth in my stomach were an anchor that pulled me after it, down through the murky fathoms of sleep."

"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."

"You have lost your mind,"Jamie said coldly, the shock receding slightly. "Or I should think you had, if ye had one to lose."

"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."

"Knowing what o'clock it is gives ye the illusion that ye have some control over your circumstances."

"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."

"This is why you use imagery when writing about sex, it's a means both of evoking immediacy and of distilling emotion."

"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."

"When I turned 35, I thought, 'Mozart was dead at 36, so I set the bar: I'm going to start writing a book on my next birthday.' I thought historical fiction would be easiest because I was a university professor and know my way around a library, and it seemed easier to look things up than make them up."

"To some extent, emotions are universal and can be treated that way; no matter what the participants' orientation or preference, they have sex for the same reasons and can experience the same array of emotions in the process. But there are three important distinctions to be made: 1. The logistics of physiology 2. The basics of sexual attraction 3. Cultural impact on character and situation."

"Dialogue doesn't take place in a vacuum. Dialogue is contradictory, in that it can either speed up or slow down a passage."

"To see the years touch ye gives me joy", he whispered, "for it means that ye live."

"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."

"It would ha' been a good deal easier, if ye'd only been a witch."