Diana Gabaldon

“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.”

“Soldiers manage by dividing themselves. They're one man in the killing, another at home, and the man that dandles his bairn on his knee has nothing to do wi' the man who crushed his enemy's throat with his boot, so he tells himself, sometimes successfully.”

“Whenever anything bubbles up, I have to put it down. I have bits and pieces all over my hard drive.”

“Every time I'd read about the stone circles, it would describe how they worked as an astronomical observance. For example, some of the circles are oriented so that at the winter solstice, the sun will strike a standing stone.”

“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.”

“People assume that science is a very cold sort of profession, whereas writing novels is a warm and fuzzy intuitive thing. But in fact, they are not at all different.”

“My sixth book, 'A Breath of Snow and Ashes,' was nominated for a number of book awards, one of which was The Quill Award, and they had it in New York at the Natural History Museum.”

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

“From the late '70s to the early '90s, I wrote anything anybody would pay me for. This ranged from articles on how to clean a longhorn cow's skull for living-room decoration to manuals on elementary math instruction on the Apple II... to a slew of software reviews and application articles done for the computer press.”

“If nobody needs me - and usually, these days, they don't - I'll fall asleep until around midnight. Then I go upstairs and work until 4 A.M., and that's when I go back to bed for good. It suits me.”

“If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.”

“I've walked on a lot of battlefields. Most of them are not haunted.”

“That dog is a wolf, is he not?''Aye, well, mostly.'A small flash of hazel told him not to quibble.'And yet he is thy boon companion, a creature of rare courage and affection, and altogether a worthy being?;'Oh, aye,' he said with more confidence. 'He is."She gave him an even look.'Thee is a wolf, too, and I know it. But thee is my wolf, and best thee know that.'He'd started to burn when she spoke, an ignition swift and fierce as the lighting of one of his cousin's matches. He put out his hand, palm forward, to her, still cautious lest she too, burst into flame.'What I said to ye, before . . . that I kent ye loved me-'She stepped forward and pressed her palm to his, her small, cool fingers linking tight.'What I say to thee now is that I do love thee. And if thee hunts at night, thee will come home.'Under the sycamore, the dog yawned and laid his muzzle on his paws.'And sleep at they feet,' Ian whispered, and gathered her in with his one good arm, both of them blazing bright as day.”

“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.”

“There's always a temptation, I think, among some historical writers to shade things toward the modern point of view. You know, they won't show someone doing something that would have been perfectly normal for the time but that is considered reprehensible today.”

“All I had when I began writing the first book was rather vague images conjured up by the notion of a man in a kilt, so essentially I began with Jamie, although I had no idea what his name was at the time.”

“'Rob Roy' was a great adaptation. It was a lot better than 'Braveheart.'”

“I have no objection to well-written romance, but I'd read enough of it to know that that's not what I had written. I also knew that if it was sold as romance I'd never be reviewed by the 'New York Times' or any other literarily respectable newspaper - which is basically true, although the 'Washington Post' did get round to me eventually.”

“I've had no fewer than three young women on separate occasions come up to me at book signings and unzip their pants, turn around, and drop them to show me that they had 'Bonnie lassie' tattooed across their rumpuses!”

“I particularly like the bookshops at National Parks and battlefields; they often have very unusual and helpful things.”