Sometimes our best action result in things that are most regrettable.
All I want, is for you to love me. Not because of what I can do or what I look like, or because I love you – just because I am.
She sounded as though love were an unfortunate but unavoidable condition.
No wonder men got impervious to superficial pain, I thought. It came from this habit of hammering each other incessantly.
It was a beautiful bright autumn day, with air like cider and a sky so blue you could drown in it.
I don’t plot the books out ahead of time, I don’t plan them. I don’t begin at the beginning and end at the end. I don’t work with an outline and I don’t work in a straight line.
I work late at night. I’m awake and nobody bothers me. It’s quiet and things come and talk to me in the silence.
That’s what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye’d otherwise have to confess. Jamie Fraser.
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.
He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, “Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children.” Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her throught the veils of time.
Lord that she might be safe. She and my children.
He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.
We have nothing now between us, save – respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies.
Hodie mihi cras tibi, said the inscription. Sic transit gloria mundi. My turn today, yours tomorrow. And thus passes away the glory of the world.
Gentle he would be, denied he would not.
If she was broken, she would slash him with her jagged edges, reckless as a drunkard with a shattered bottle.
He reached forward then took me in his arms, held me close for a moment, the breath of snow and ashes cold around us. Then he kissed me, released me, and I took a deep breath of cold air, harsh with the scent of burning.
This wife you have, Bird said at last, deeply contemplative, did you pay a great deal for her? She cost me almost everything I had, he said, with a wry tone that made the others laugh. But worth it.
There are things that I canna tell you, at least not yet. And I’ll ask nothing of ye that ye canna give me. But what I would ask of ye – when you do tell me something, let it be the truth. And I’ll promise ye the same. We have nothing now between us, save – respect, perhaps. And I think that respect has maybe room for secrets, but not for lies. Do ye agree?
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.