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Diana Gabaldon

Born 1952 AD; death year unknown

Name supplied in the contributor-provided quotation collection. Basic attribution label; identity, lifetime and quotation authenticity have not been independently verified.

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Quotations and sayings

04c. 1952 AD
For a different woman, a different relationship, a different situation, gentleness might have been the proper, the only approach—but not for this woman, in these circumstances. The only thing that will cleanse Claire (and reassure her: look at what she says at the end of it. She feels safe again, having felt the power and violence in him) is violence. And—the most important point here—Jamie pays attention to what she wants, rather than proceeding with his own notion of how it should be, even though it’s a sensible notion and the one most people would have.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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05c. 1952 AD
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.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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08c. 1952 AD
But it wouldn’t have half the power of a story in which Jamie and Claire truly conquer real evil and thus show what real love is. Real love has real costs—and they’re worth it. I’ve always said all my books have a shape, and Outlander’s internal geometry consists of three slightly overlapping triangles. The apex of each triangle is one of the three emotional climaxes of the book: 1) when Claire makes her wrenching choice at the stones and stays with Jamie, 2) when she saves Jamie from Wentworth, and 3) when she saves his soul at the abbey. It would still be a good story if I’d had only 1 and 2—but (see above), the Rule of Three. A story that goes one, two, three, has a lot more impact than just a one–two punch.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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09c. 1952 AD
Babies are soft. Anyone looking at them can see the tender, fragile skin and know it for the rose-leaf softness that invites a finger's touch. But when you live with them and love them, you feel the softness going inward, the round-cheeked flesh wobbly as custard, the boneless splay of the tiny hands. Their joints are melted rubber, and even when you kiss them hard, in the passion of loving their existence, your lips sink down and seem never to find bone. Holding them against you, they melt and mold, as though they might at any moment flow back into your body.But from the very start, there is that small streak of steel within each child. That thing that says "I am," and forms the core of personality.In the second year, the bone hardens and the child stands upright, skull wide and solid, a helmet protecting the softness within. And "I am" grows, too. Looking at them, you can almost see it, sturdy as heartwood, glowing through the translucent flesh.The bones of the face emerge at six, and the soul within is fixed at seven. The process of encapsulation goes on, to reach its peak in the glossy shell of adolescence, when all softness then is hidden under the nacreous layers of the multiple new personalities that teenagers try on to guard themselves.In the next years, the hardening spreads from the center, as one finds and fixes the facets of the soul, until "I am" is set, delicate and detailed as an insect in amber.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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12c. 1952 AD
For my sake,” he said firmly, addressing the air in front of him as though it were a tribunal, “I dinna want ye to bear another child. I wouldna risk your loss, Sassenach,” he said, his voice suddenly husky. “Not for a dozen bairns. I’ve daughters and sons, nieces and nephews, grandchildren—weans enough.”He looked at me directly then, and spoke softly.“But I’ve no life but you, Claire.”He swallowed audibly, and went on, eyes fixed on mine.“I did think, though . . . if ye do want another child . . . perhaps I could still give ye one.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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14c. 1952 AD
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.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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17c. 1952 AD
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 the joining of bodies.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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18c. 1952 AD
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.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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19c. 1952 AD
During his time with the French army, years before, one of the sergeants had explained to the younger mercenaries the trick of falling asleep the night before a battle. "Make yourself comfortable, examine your conscience, and make a good Act of Contrition. Father Hugo says that in time of war, even if there is no priest to shrive you, your sins can be forgiven this way. Since you cannot commit sins while asleep--not even you, Simenon!--you will awake in a state of grace, ready to fall on the bastards. And with nothing to look forward to but victory or heaven-- how can you be afraid.
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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23c. 1952 AD
When I was small, I never wanted to step in puddles. Not because of any fear of drowned worms or wet stockings; I was by and large a grubby child, with a blissful disregard for filth of any kind.It was because I couldn't bring myself believe that that perfect smooth expanse was no more than I thin film of water over solid earth. I believed it was an opening into some fathomless space. Sometimes, seeing the tiny ripples caused by my approach, I thought the puddle impossibly deep, a bottomless sea in which the lazy coil of a tentacle and gleam of scale lay hidden, with the threat of huge bodies and sharp teeth adrift and silent in the far-down depths.And then, looking down into reflection, I would see my own round face and frizzled hair against a featureless blue sweep, and think instead that the puddle was the entrance to another sky. If I stepped in there, I would drop at once, and keep on falling, on and on, into blue space.The only time I would dare walk though a puddle was at twilight, when the evening stars came out. If I looked in the water and saw one lighted pinprick there, I could slash through unafraid--for if I should fall into the puddle and on into space, I could grab hold of the star as I passed, and be safe.Even now, when I see a puddle in my path, my mind half-halts--though my feet do not--then hurries on, with only the echo of the though left b
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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24c. 1952 AD
And I tell you what, L.J.; you see all these people you haven't seen for twenty years, and there's this split second when you meet somebody you used to know, and you think 'My God, he's changed!,'and then all of a sudden, he hasn't- it's just like the twenty years weren't there, I mean" he rubbed his head vigorously, struggling for meaning--"you see they've got some gray, and some lines, and maybe they aren't just the same as they were, but two minutes past that shock, and you don't see it anymore. They are just the same people they always were, and you have to make yourself stand back a ways to see that they aren't eighteen anymore
Diana Gabaldon / quote
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