Kathryn

“When I decided that I should have a female character, I simply introduced her, knowing nothing about her other than the fact that she was an Englishwoman. ... Whereupon Claire Elizabeth Beauchamp promptly took over the story and began telling it herself. Being in no position to argue with her, I took the path of least resistance, and went along to see what would happen next.”
― Diana Gabaldon, The Outlandish Companion

“…but Sassenach—I am the true home of your heart, and I know that.”

He lifted my hands to his mouth and kissed my upturned palms, one and then the other, his breath warm and his beard-stubble soft on my fingers.

“I have loved others, and I do love many, Sassenach—but you alone hold all my heart, whole in your hands,” he said softly. “And you know that.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart's Blood

“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 the 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, ye gave me a rare woman, and God! I loved her well.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Dragonfly in Amber

“I had not intended to love him; the reader knows I had wrought hard to extirpate from my soul the germs of love there detected; and now, at the first renewed view of him, they spontaneously revived, great and strong! He made me love him without looking at me.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre