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.
I work on multiple projects at a time because it keeps me from getting writer’s block.
I know why the Jews and Muslims have nine hundred names for God; one small word is not enough for love.
Then let amourous kisses dwell On our lips, begin and tell A Thousand and a Hundred score A Hundred and a Thousand more.
While the Lord might insist that vengeance was His, no male Highlander of my acquaintance had ever thought it right that the Lord should be left to handle such things without assistance.
Men go where they will, they do as they must; it is not a woman’s part to bid them to stay, nor yet to reproach them for being what they are-or for not coming back.
The most irritating thing about cliches, I decided, was how frequently they were true.
And if your life is a suitable exchange for my honor, why is my honor not a suitable exchange for your life?
I’m afraid that my wife picked up a number of colorful expressions from the Yanks and such, Frank offered, with a nervous smile. True, I said, gritting my teeth as I wrapped a water-soaked napkin about my hand. Men tend to be very colorful when you’re picking shrapnel out of them.
There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle.
Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.
While ye sleep in my arms, I can say things to ye that would be daft and silly waking, and your dreams will know the truth of them.
When God closes a door, he opens a window. Yeah. The problem was that this particular window opened off the tenth story, and he wasn’t so sure God supplied parachutes.
Deftly whipping a small tuning fork from his pocket, he struck it smartly against a pillar and held it next to Jamie’s left ear. Jamie rolled his eyes heavenward, but shrugged and obligingly sang a note. The little man jerked back as though he’d been shot.
I thought I could make out Jamie’s Highland screech, but that was likely imagination; they all sounded equally demented.
Through eons of living in a land so poor there was little to eat but oats, they had as usual converted necessity into a virtue, and insisted that they liked the stuff.
Scots have long memories, and they’re not the most forgiving of people.
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.
That’s for calling your father a fool. It may be true, but it’s disrespectful. Brian Fraser to teenage Jamie.
So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside’s going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie.