The Ladies of Lallybroch call them Jamie-isms. Sure wish I'd thought of that term first. These are my favorite quotations by and about Jamie. All page numbers refer to the Dell paperback editions of the books. No copyright infringement is intended. Enjoy, and don't forget to vote for your favorite!

The lad had nice feeling. Instead of calling for help or retreating in confusion, he sat down, gathered me firmly onto his lap with his good arm, and sat rocking me gently, muttering soft Gaelic in my ear and smoothing my hair with one hand. I wept bitterly, surrendering, but slowly I began to quiet a bit, as Jamie stroked my neck and back, offering me the comfort of his broad, warm chest. My sobs lessened, and I began to calm myself, leaning tiredly into the curve of his shoulder. No wonder he was so good with horses, I thought blearily, feeling his fingers rubbing gently behind my ears, listening to that soothing, incomprehensible speech. If I were a horse, I'd let him ride me anywhere. (Outlander, pp. 91-92)

...I had one last try.

"Does it bother you that I'm not a virgin?" He hesitated a moment before answering.

"Well, no," he said slowly, "so long as it doesna bother you that I am." He grinned at my drop-jawed expression, and backed toward the door.

"Reckon one of us should know what they're doing," he said. (Outlander, p. 255)

I turned to Jamie in sudden panic. "I can't marry you! I don't even know your last name!"

He looked down at me and cocked a ruddy eyebrow. "Oh. It's Fraser. James Alexander Malcolm MacKenzie Fraser." He pronounced it formally, each name slow and distinct. (Outlander, p. 264)

Jamie shuffled his feet in the dust, embarrassed. He ducked his head shyly. "Well now, Sassenach, I'm no better than most men. Sometimes I try, but I dinna always manage. Ye know that bit in St. Paul, where he says 'tis better to marry than burn? Well, I was burnin' quite badly there."

I laughed again, feeling light-hearted as a sixteen-year-old myself. "So you married me," I teased, "to avoid the occasion of sin?"

"Aye. That's what marriage is good for; it makes a sacrament out of things ye'd otherwise have to confess." (Outlander, p. 409)

"Murtagh was right about women. Sassenach, I risked my life for ye, committing theft, arson, assault, and murder into the bargain. In return for which ye call me names, insult my mandhood, kick me in the ballocks and claw my face. Then I beat you half to death and tell ye the most humiliating things have ever happened to me, and you say ye love me." He laid his head on his knees and laughed some more. Finally he rose and held out a hand to me, wiping his eyes with the other.

"You're no verra sensible, Sassenach, but I like ye fine. Let's go." (Outlander, pp. 409-410)

Jamie twisted in his saddle, to look back up the slope.

"I prayed all the way up that hill yesterday," he said softly. "Not for you to stay; I didna think that would be right. I prayed I'd be strong enough to send ye away." He shook his head, still gazing up the hill, a faraway look in his eyes.

"I said 'Lord, if I've never had courage in my life before, le me have it now. Let me be brave enough not to fall on my knees and beg her to stay.'" He pulled his eyes away from the cottage and smiled briefly at me.

"Hardest thing I ever did Sassenach." (Outlander, pp. 563-564)

Jamie had come to stand beside me at the window. Staring absently out at the driving rain, he said, "There was another reason. The main one."

"Reason?" I said stupidly.

"Why I married you."

"Which was?" I don't know what I expected him to say, perhaps some further revelation of his family's contorted affairs. What he did say was more of a shock, in its way.

"Because I wanted you." He turned from the window to face me. "More than I ever wanted anything in my life," he added softly. (Outlander, pp. 595-596)

"Is there really nothing for me here, Jamie?" I held his eyes, not letting him turn away from me.

He pulled myself gently from my grasp without answering and stood back, suddenly a figure from another time, seen in relief upon a background of hazy hills, the life in his face a trick of the shadowing rock, as if flattened beneath layers of paint, an artist's reminiscence of forgotten places and passions turned to dust.

I looked into his eyes, filled with pain and yearning, and he was flesh again, real and immediate, lover, husband, man. (Outlander, p. 558)

"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." (Dragonfly in Amber, p.238)

He heaved a deep exasperated sigh. "Sassenach, I've been stabbed, bitten, slapped, and whipped since supper - which I dinna get to finish. I dinna like to scare children and I dinna like to flog men, and I've had to do both. I've two hundred English camped three miles away and no idea what to do about them. I'm tired, I'm hungry, and I'm sore. If you've anything like womanly sympathy about ye, I could use a bit!" (Dragonfly in Amber, p. 622)

"Aye, well," he said, "I dinna recall Adam's asking God to take back Eve - and look what she did to him." He leaned forward and kissed my forehead as I laughed, then drew the blanket up over my bare shoulders. "Go to sleep, my wee rib. I shall be needin' a helpmeet in the morning." (Dragonfly in Amber, p.626)

"I will find you," he whispered in my ear. "I promise. If I must endure two hundred years of purgatory, two hundred years without you - then that is my punishment, which I have earned for my crimes. For I have lied, and killed, and stolen; betrayed and broken trust. But there is one thing that shall lie in the balance. When I shall stand before God, I shall have one thing to say, to weigh against the rest."

His voice dropped nearly to a whisper, and his arms tightened around me.

"Lord, you gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well." (Dragonfly in Amber, p. 889)

"Cut me," I said urgently. "Deep enought to leave a scar. I want to take away your touch with me, to have something of you that will stay with me always. I don't care if it hurts; nothing could hurt worse than leaving you. At least when I touch it, wherever I am, I can feel your touch on me." ...

He bound the wound, but not before I saw that the cut was in the shape of a small, slightly crooked letter "J." (Dragonfly in Amber, p. 891)

He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye. "What is it that makes every man ye meet want to take off his breeks within five minutes of meetin' ye?" (Drums of Autumn, p. 100)

He took both my hands in his then, and kissed them - the left, which still bore the gold ring of my marriage to Frank, and then the right, with his own silver ring.

"Da mi basia mille," he whispered, smiling. Give me a thousand kisses. It was the inscription inside my ring, a brief quotation from a love song by Catullus. I bent and gave him one back. "Dien mille altera," I said. Then a thousand more. (Drums of Autumn, p. 153)

"Aye, well. I said it would do fine, I'd show them. And I had just grasped the mare's rump to stop her moving, and I was getting ready to... ah... make myself king of Ireland. That's when I woke." (The Fiery Cross, pp. 7-8.

Quotations

Which is the best Jamie quote? The lad had nice feeling... ...I had one last try... I turned to Jamie in sudden panic... Jamie shuffled his feet in the dust, embarrassed... "Murtagh was right about women..." Jamie twisted in his saddle... Jamie had come to stand beside me at the window... "Is there really nothing for me here, Jamie..." "I'll leave it to you, Sassenach..." He heaved a deep exasperated sigh... "Aye, well," he said... "I will find you"... "Cut me"... He turned then, and gave me a narrow eye... He took both my hands in his then... "Aye, well. I said it would do fine..."

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