Go Tell the Bees that I Am Gone (Outlander, #9)

by Diana Gabaldon

“If the author thought it was worth his writing it down, then it’s worth my reading it. I dinna mean to miss a single word.” A sharp pang struck me then, seeing the reverential way in which he handled the book, turning over pages with a delicate forefinger. A book—any book—had a meaning well beyond its contents for a man who’d lived years at a time with little or no access to the printed word, and only the memory of stories to provide him and his companions escape from desperate circumstances.

“Is there an art to digging privies?” I asked this, teasing, because if Jamie was a perfectionist about anything—and in all truth, he was a perfectionist about quite a number of things, nearly all having to do with tools or weapons—it was digging a proper privy. “Wasn’t it Voltaire who said that the perfect is the enemy of the good?”

“God, I want to lie down.” “What’s stopping you?” “I mean to enjoy the anticipation as much as the lyin’ down. Besides, I’m hungry. Have we any food to hand?”

“My body is out from my control,” he said softly. “She was the half of my body—the very half of my soul.”

“J’ai connu une jeune fille de ce nom Amélie,”

“Mais elle est morte.”

“Les enfants savent qu’il ne faut rien toucher près de la porte,”

“Education to do what, Sassenach?” Jamie asked. “Fanny’s taught her to read, and she can write her name and count to a hundred. What else d’ye think she’d find useful?”