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.]
Posted on May 22, 2011 9:04 PM
