What’s your line?
Recently, I saw a thread in which people presented/discussed their favorite sentences/lines from the OUTLANDER/Lord John books. Everyone has their favorites, from the funny to the touching, the dramatic, or the philosophical. And sometimes just because they like the way it sounds. {g}
Here are just a few that I’ve seen quoted as people’s favorites:
“…but it all comes right in the end. So it did, I thought–though often not in any expected way.”
“…for I was gromished from the fall and my right ankle gruppit–and was just about to call once more when I heard sounds of a rare hochmagandy…”
“You’re no verra peaceful, Sassenach… but I like ye fine.”
“And what was the ransom, then, that would buy a man’s soul, and deliver my darling from the power of the dog?”
“And if thee hunts at night, thee will come home.”
“Holy God.”
“And when my body shall cease, my soul will still be yours. Claire—I swear by my hope of heaven, I will not be parted from you.”
“Seems I canna possess your soul without losing my own.”
“That’s all right,” I assured him. “We’re married. Share and share aline. One flesh; the priest said so.”
“Only you. Because ye will not let me lie – and yet ye love me.”
“Whatever (your feelings) are, though, they must be exigent, to cause you to contemplate such drastic expedients.”
“Don’t buy any peaches.”
“On your right, man.”
“Ye scream like a lassie,” he said, eyes returning to his work.
“Come to me, Claire, daughter of Henry, strength of my heart…”
“Stand by my side, Roger, son of Jeremiah, son of my house…”
“You are my courage, as I am your conscience,” he whispered. “You are my heart—and I your compassion. We are neither of us whole, alone.”
“That’s the Third Law of Thermodynamics,” I said. “No,” he said. “That’s faith.”
“What is it about ye that makes men want to take their breeks off within five minutes of meetin’ ye?”(coupled with) “Well, if you don’t know, my dear…I’m sure no one does.”
“Ian, … Ye, sound like your mother. Stop”
” I canna tell whether ye mean to compliment my virility, Sassenach, or insult my morals, but I dinna care much for either suggestion.”
“Lord, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”
“I am the son of a great man”.
“I mean to make you sigh as though your heart would break, and scream with the wanting, and at last to cry out in my arms, and I shall know that I’ve served ye well.”
“Dinna be afraid. There are the two of us now.”
I do (naturally enough) like all of those, but my own particular favorite is probably the last sentence from THE FIERY CROSS:
“When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’-ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”
Now, I like that one particularly, because I didn’t write it. It’s something my husband actually said to me one day, quite casually, looking up from his Wall Street Journal (minus the Scottish accent). I do know a good line when I hear one, though.
(Doug, having seen this, says he appreciates the credit, but would rather I mention that he is the source of the advice on how to get rid of crabs (of the pubic lice variety) that Murtagh offers in DRAGONFLY IN AMBER. This is true. The part where Jamie is teaching his young nephew not to pee on his feet, remarking, “It’s hard when your belly-button sticks out more than your cock does,” is also one of Doug’s lines, along with the bit where Jamie (after a drunken night) wakes up, sniffs his oxter and remarks that he smells like a dead boar. And people wonder where writers get their material…some of us marry it.)
People always do ask me “Which book is your favorite?”—and to me, it’s all One Huge Thing, so I can’t really pick. But I’m in the habit of saying, “The one I’m working on now—because that’s the one where I don’t yet know everything.”
I’m now in the Final Frenzy phase of SCOTTISH PRISONER (this is where I know Everything, and it’s a matter of how long I can sit at the computer without interruption and/or stopping to eat {g}), so at the moment, I’m in love with this book. Just for fun, here are a few of the lines that I particularly like from it:
“I haven’t seen a cove that sick since me uncle Morris what was a sailor in a merchant-man come down with the hockogrockle,” said Tom, shaking his head. “And he died of it.”
“He at once felt better, having taken action, and smoothing his crumpled neckcloth, went in search of fried sardines.”
“And then I heard other noises—screeching and skellochs, and the screaming of horses, aye, but not the noise of battle. More like folk who are roaring drunk—and the horses, too.”
“Distracted by the vision of amphibians in their thousands locked in slime-wrapped sexual congress amid the dark waters, he caught his foot in a root and fell heavily.”
“Abbot Michael was talking of neutral things: the weather (unusually good and a blessing for the lambs), the state of the chapel roof (holes so big it looked as though a pig had walked across the roof, and a full-grown pig, too), the day (so fortunate that it was Thursday and not Friday, as there would be meat for the mid-day dinner, and of course Jamie would be joining them, he would enjoy Brother Bertram’s version of a sauce, it had no particular name and was of an indistinct color—purple, the abbot would have called it, but it was well known he had no sense of color and had to ask the sacristan which cope to wear in ordinary time, as he could not tell red from green and took it only on faith that there were such colors in the world, but Brother Fionn—he’d have met Brother Fionn, the clerk outside?—assured him it was so, and surely a man with a face like that would never lie, you had only to look at the size of his nose to know that), and other things to which Jamie could nod or smile or make a noise. “
“Behind him, he thought he heard the echo of wild geese calling, and despite himself, looked back.”
[That's the cover for the Dutch edition of SCOTTISH PRISONER, and if you can figure out what it's supposed to be, you're a better man than I am, Gunga Din.]
My favourite line? From The Fiery Cross, when Jemmy asks if Jamie has balls, and Jamie replies “Aye, lad, I have … But your Da’s are bigger.” Lord, how that man warms my heart!
A Eucharist wafer… wrapped in a bit of kale for travel? Food for both the soul and the gut.
***
“And if Time is anything akin to God, I suppose that Memory must be the Devil.”
-prologue, A Breath Of Snow And Ashes…
My favorite line is from Outlander, an observation from Claire that was so directly applicable to my own life when I read it that it made me laugh out loud: “Not for the first time, I reflected that intimacy and romance are not synonymous.”
That cover is green crushed velvet in the background, with a gold silhouette of a rearing horse and some birch(?) trees between the two parts of the gold medallion.
These are my favorites from Voyager:
“It might,” I said, a little faintly. “What am I supposed to be doing while you do this?”
“Well, ye might moan a bit, if ye like, just to encourage me, but otherwise, ye just lie still.”
“But here,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him, “here in the dark, with you…I have no name.”
Vote for Doug’s line. I will always *love* that line. ; )
Yeah, I’ve loved Doug’s line since you first mentioned it.
As for the cover … I copied it to Irfanview, and can discern there’s a rearing horse at the bottom left of the split in the circle, and two trees at the right. If it were A Breath of Snow and Ashes, I might think that Willie was off somewhere to the left, out of sight, having been thrown by the horse.
It’s a raring horse on a hill with tree’s, in front of a mountain.
All of those are great, but my favorite comes from Dragonfly: “I’ll leave it to you, Sassenach,” he said dryly, “to imagine what it feels like to arrive unexpectedly in the midst of a brothel, in possession of a verra large sausage.”
That still makes me laugh out loud,
Lord, that one made me laugh myself teary…
OMG! I remember when I read this I laughed so hard that my mother and my husband came to see what was happening!
Re: the cover — looks like a horse…rearing…facing a wooded hill, probably in winter? [shrug] Did horses and scraggly trees scream “SCOTLAND!” to the German publishing company?
I quite enjoyed that thread. I can’t wait to read the book, although in all fairness, I have to read all the previous LJ books first.
I’m particularly taken with the frog chorus snip you’ve posted before, though. Looks like I have my reading cut out for me this summer! [g]
You are so blessed to have a husband who could say something as romantic as that! Maybe he should be a writer too as he has such a lovely way with words!
I particularly love the part where Jamie compares Claire’s hair to a beech tree gone silver in the rain. That’s Voyager.
And I love the passage about the second sleep in Snow and Ashes!
I can’t believe no one mentioned this line from “Dragonfly in Amber.” I’m not sure I’m quoting it verbatim, because someone borrowed my copy, but Jamie says something to Claire like, “You are my soul, and your face is my heart.”
Yes…I love that one…
Favourite line…just one? Can’t I just say “all of the above”. Reading the favourites tossed me back and forth through the books and brought different scenes brilliantly to mind. I do love Doug’s line though, my husband has said the same, although not quite so eloquently.
Just finished re-reading “The Haunted Soldier” and I love the language, but I am very happy not to have lived in that time.
Looking forward to “The Scottish Prisoner”, but do take time to eat!
Warm Hugs
Vicki
Oh, man, I am SO far behind! I had to look up “The Haunted Soldier” just to find out it was a Lord John novel!
Well, I love all the books, but the one scene that had me sitting straight up in bed, tears streaming down my eyes and my heart thumping was in Breath of Snow and Ashes, when Jamie was searching for Claire, who had been kidnapped.
“He was saying something else, urgently, but I couldn’t manage to translate it. Energy pulsed through him, hot and violent, like the current in a live wire, and I vaguely realized that he was still almost berserk; *****he had no English. “****
I can sort-of imagine my husband going mad with fear if something like that were to happen to me. He’s a man of few words and so this particular sentiment…that he was so BEYOND crazy with madness that he couldn’t even talk right, rings true.
I love your books so much….*sigh*. Don’t ever stop writing.
Ditto! Same here…I don’t even think my husband would ask questions, just murder.
Awe, you listed some gems in this post! Other top favorites of mine:
“gingerly” … I didn’t realized just how much you use it to describe a characters action until I listened to the series on audio (picked up on a lot of stuff actually, that I missed the first two times around reading the hardcopies). But I love it, I find myself using it now! =)
And nothing beats “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!”
All the books are full of some great lines, some that make you cry and some that make you laugh, but I have to admit to having adopted “Jesus H Roosevelt Christ” as one of my choicer epithets (especially useful as I can’t bring myself to say the “F” word, even when sorely provoked!)
Funny, I have been so immersed in these books for so long, I recently muttered “Jesus Christ!” and my grand daughter said, “You forgot the Roosevelt, Gram!” LOL
My all time favorite line is from “A Breath of Snow and Ashes.” I can never remember all the words but it is something that I think of every time someone I know dies. It all brings back memories of a difficult time in life. The line starts out with “All death is one…” It makes me think of how going through the death of a loved one – or even being with a close friend that is dealing with the death of their loved one – brings back all the same feelings from deaths I’ve experienced.
Dear Marnie–
That _is_ a good line, but I can’t take credit for it. {g} Jamie is quoting John Donne, who was Exceedingly Good at quotable lines. (That is, btw, from the same sermon that says, “No man is an island…”.)
–Diana
Donne’s poem “The Flea” is lovely example of male logic.
On every readthrough I I get shivers at “Lord, ye gave me a rare woman….”
But as for one not yet listed here, I truly adore “I’m a Roman Catholic and I believe in vitamins!” I’m not exactly Brianna’s biggest fan most of the time, but I love that one.
Oh, there are some great ones in there. Just reading that list takes me back through the books again. Sigh…
My fave line is “You’re tearing my guts out, Claire!” The depth in that scene and in those words stuck with me.
Oh Cyndi, Please remind us which book and in what context….
That is from Outlander… the scene by the road after Jaime rescues Claire from Ft William… LOVE that scene….
Wow, that is my absolute favorite, too! I was reading through the comments looking for it and here it is.
All those quotes are so great. A group could spend days picking out all those that have touched us one way or the other. I must add of course to the growing list.
“My God,” he croaked. “You’re huge.”
“Balls, what’s balls?” I laughed I cried at a babes innocence with this one.
I’ve lost count with how many times I’ve read the Outlander series (i may be bordering on the obsessive) but i love these books and remain in wait for the next and the next after that etc.. As someone above said please don’t stop writing.
Fan Always
Andrea
LOL! It took me a minute to realize those were two SEPARATE quotes! (Sounds like a “comparison” in the men’s room!)
Andrea,
Those are some of my favorites too.
I am afraid that I can’t quite remember which book it was but I loved the conversation between Jamie and Claire about the endurance of his love for her where he was explaining to her that when she had gone back to Frank and modernity that although he had been dead for 200years he still loved her….. Sigh….. Oh and in ‘Dragon Fly in Amber’ when Claire asked Jamie to cut her, to leave his touch upon her…. And then from ‘Voyager’, “Oh, Claire” he whispered. “Oh, God, Claire.”
lol i might be a tad obsessive myself i started reading the books in 9th grade ive read the first 5 books 6 times the 6th 3 times and the 7th twice now lol i also have a tattoo on my back of a fairy sitting on my three fave books and outlander is one of them that series has been my fave since 2002 and there are far to many quotes that i love to even begin lol
I have been contemplating a tattoo for many years and cannot decide what it should be…to many choices…but as my kids can attest…one leads to more! My husband already has decided what he wants…he has a 1973 VW Thing…we also own Spudnut donut shop…so his tat is going to be Mr. Spuddy sitting his his Thing.
After surviving a long, bitter divorce, I have Misneach (Gaelic for Courage) tattooed on my left hip bone. Not everyone can see it, but it’s a constant reminder of what I went through and the courage I needed to keep going until the end. I got it a couple weeks before I met Diana at a book festival on my birthday.
My very favourite line is the one your husband said to you!
When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’-ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”
I also love the way Jamie talks about ‘the germs’.
YES! I love it when Jamie and/or Young Ian call germs “wee beasties”!
Me too…wee beasties! I call them that now!
The only quote I have ever written in my journal is the one from your husband. It makes my heart hurt every time I read it.
“When the day shall come that we do part,” he said softly, and turned to look at me, “if my last words are not ‘I love you’-ye’ll ken it was because I didna have time.”