So remember it, lad. If your head thinks up mischief, your backside's going to pay for it. Brian Fraser to young Jamie

I meant it, Claire,' he said quietly. 'My life is yours. And it's yours to decide what we shall do, where we go next. To France, to Italy, even back to Scotland. My heart has been yours since first I saw ye, and you've held my soul and body between your two hands here, and kept them safe. We shall go as ye say.

Lying on the floor, with the carved panels of the ceiling flickering dimly above, I found myself thinking that I had always heretofore assumed that the tendency of eigh­teenth-century ladies to swoon was due to tight stays; now I rather thought it might be due to the idiocy of eighteenth-century men.

It's a good country for myths. Things seem to take root here.

When God closes a door, he opens a window. Yeah. The problem was that this particular window opened off the tenth story, and he wasn't so sure God supplied parachutes.

One dictum I had learned on the battlefields of France in a far distant war: You cannot save the world, but you might save the man in front of you, if you work fast enough.

I gave you justice, it said, as I was taught it. And I gave you mercy , too, so far as I could. While I could not spare you pain and humiliation, I make you a gift of my own pains and humiliations, that yours might be easier to bear.