Cross Stitch (Outlander, #1)

by Diana Gabaldon

Life among academics had taught me that a well-expressed opinion is usually better than a badly expressed fact, so far as professional advancement goes.

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.

People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans – weak and helpless save for cunning – have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it, was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it.

There comes a turning point in intense physical struggle where one abandons oneself to a profligate usage of strength and bodily resource, ignoring the costs until the struggle is over. Women find this point in childbirth; men in battle. Past that certain point you lose all fear of pain or injury. Life becomes very simple then; you will do what you are trying to do, or die in the attempt, and it does not really matter much which.

‘As though, knowing that everything is possible, suddenly nothing is necessary.’

For where all love is, the speaking is unnecessary. It is all. It is undying. And it is enough.