1
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.Diana Gabaldon
2
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
3
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
4
And I have wondered often, was I master in my soul, or did I become the slave of my own blade?Diana Gabaldon
5
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.Diana Gabaldon
6
You have lost your mind, " Jamie said coldly, the shock receding slightly. "Or I should think you had, if ye had one to lose.Diana Gabaldon
7
He was dead. However, his nose throbbed painfully, which he thought odd in the circumstances.Diana Gabaldon