Quotes by Scottish Authors - Page 13

If there’s one shade a woman of colour can’t wear it’s got to be the one everyone expects, hasn’t it?
Sara Sheridan
At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. ‘I cannot swim. You know it?” In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. ‘Trust me.’ And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board.
Dorothy Dunnett
My dear boy, in Ireland the midwife uses one hand to hold the baby's best fighting arm from the font water, and grips its jaws with the other lest the goes to litigation about it. Says O'LiamRoe
Dorothy Dunnett
One should never regret one's excesses, only one's failures of nerve.
Iain M. Banks
I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.
Thomas Carlyle
Having instant feedback on twitter to research material I'm considering is an enormous help.
Sara Sheridan
She had not expected, out in the world, to find herself quite so much the wrong sort of person.
Ali Smith
The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more.
Sara Sheridan
The setting sunWith yellow radiance lighten'd all the vale;And as the warriors moved, each polish'd helm,Corslet or spear, glanced back his gilded beams.The hill they climbed, and halting at its top,Of more than mortal size, towering, they seem'dA host angelic, clad in burning arms.
John Home
I didn't want to take it. I knew it was a powerful drug, but I also knew it was a catabolic drug that consumed the body.
David Millar
--Thing is though, Spud, whin yir intae skag, that's it. That's aw yuv goat tae worry aboot. Ken Billy, ma brar, likes? He's jist signed up tae go back intae the fuckin army. He's gaun tae fucking Belfast, the stupid cunt. Ah always knew that the fucker wis tapped. Fuckin imperialist lackey. Ken whit the daft cunt turned roond n sais tae us? He goes: Ah cannae fuckin stick civvy street. Bein in the army, it's like being a junky. The only difference is thit ye dinnae git shot at sae often bein a junky. Besides, it's usually you that does the shootin.--That, eh, likesay, seems a bit eh, fucked up like man. Ken?--Naw but, listen the now. You jist think aboot it. In the army they dae everything fir they daft cunts. Feed thum, gie the cunts cheap bevvy in scabby camp clubs tae keep thum fae gaun intae toon n lowerin the fuckin tone, upsetting the locals n that. Whin they git intae civvy street, thuv goat tae dae it aw fir thumsells.--Yeah, but likesay, it's different though, cause . . . Spud tries to cut in, but Renton is in full flight. A bottle in the face is the only thing that could shut him up at this point; even then only for a few seconds.--Uh, uh . . . wait a minute, mate. Hear us oot. Listen tae whit ah've goat tae say here . . . what the fuck wis ah sayin . . . aye! Right. Whin yir oan junk, aw ye worry aboot is scorin. Oaf the gear, ye worry aboot loads ay things. Nae money, cannae git pished. Goat money, drinkin too much. Cannae git a burd, nae chance ay a ride. Git a burd, too much hassle, cannae breathe withoot her gittin oan yir case. Either that, or ye blow it, and feel aw guilty. Ye worry aboot bills, food, bailiffs, these Jambo Nazi scum beatin us, aw the things that ye couldnae gie a fuck aboot whin yuv goat a real junk habit. Yuv just goat one thing tae worry aboot. The simplicity ay it aw. Ken whit ah mean?
Irvine Welsh
And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Ah'm thinking about shoutin 'stop' but ah could never turn away at this point. If smack is as addictive as they say, then ah'm already aw the junky ah'm ever gaunny be.
Irvine Welsh
Two choices; one: tough it oot, back in the room, two: phone that cunt Forrester and go tae Muirhoose, get fucked aboot and ripped oaf wi some crap gear. Nae contest.In twenty minutes it wis: — Muirhoose pal? tae the driver oan the 32 bus and quiveringly stickin ma forty-five pence intae the the box. Any port in a storm, and it’s raging in here behind ma face.
Irvine Welsh
God never estimates what we give from impulse. We are given credit for what we determine in our hearts to give; for the giving that is governed by a fixed determination. The Spirit of God revolutionises our philanthropic instincts. Much of our philanthropy is simply the impulse to save ourselves an uncomfortable feeling. The Spirit of God alters all that. As saints our attitude towards giving is that we give for Jesus Christ’s sake, and from no other motive.
Oswald Chambers
Poor, harmless paper, that might have gone to print a Shakespeare on, and was instead so clumsily defaced with nonsense.
Robert Louis Stevenson
If I start giving people what they like I'll turn into one of them and I don't want to be one of them I want to be one of me.
Craig Ferguson
How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it, except the pleasure of seeing it.
Adam Smith
In that time while he was still aware, which was the worse, I wonder: the agony of his physical torture or the horror of their utter hatred, of their moral certainty that he was so beyond the bounds of what they could accept that he deserved not just a death but one of such brutality, such inhumanity, as would make the seraphs who burned Sodom bow their heads in cold respect? What is it like, I wonder, to learn the full capacity of hatred in a lesson hammered home with bone broken on wood and skin ripped on barbed wire?
Hal Duncan
If peace came it would have to do so when there had been time to allow the hatred to grow out of people’s thinking.
Sara Sheridan
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean.
Robert Louis Stevenson
Captain," said the squire, "the house is quite invisible from the ship. It must be the flag they are aiming at. Would it not be wiser to take it in?""Strike my colours!" cried the captain, "No sir, not I"...
Robert Louis Stevenson
Madness is born in the blood. It is my birthright.
Grant Morrison
Enough madness? Enough? And how do you measure madness? - The Joker
Grant Morrison
I have always considered David Hume as approaching as nearly the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will allow.
Adam Smith
No one's book is perfect.
Sara Sheridan
He is not concerned about making you blessed and happy right now, but He’s continually working out His ultimate perfection for you...
Oswald Chambers
The town is mobbed out with Saturday shoppers looking for Christmas bargains. You can almost breathe in the raw greed which hangs in the air like vapour. As the late afternoon darkness falls, the lights look tacky and sinister.
Irvine Welsh
I find it inspiring to actively choose which traditions to celebrate and also come up with new ideas for traditions of my own.
Sara Sheridan
They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener;
Robert Louis Stevenson
Once they have dedicated themselves to a cause, women will fight to the end for it.
Sara Sheridan
Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won.
Sara Sheridan
I was overcome by a wave of wonder at how much good was going on, and how you heard about the bad things that happened so much that you overlooked the immensely disproportionate majority of other acts done to the real benefit of self and others without which none of this would be here at all.
Ken MacLeod
Half the fun of writing a novel is finding out from other people later on what you actually meant.
Iain Banks
think young writers should get other degrees first, social sciences, arts degrees or even business degrees. What you learn is research skills, a necessity because a lot of writing is about trying to find information.
Irvine Welsh
In life you hoped to do what you could but mostly you did what you were told and that was the end of it.
Iain M. Banks
of their passions in the same object at that particular time.
Adam Smith
I just think people overvalue argument because they like to hear themselves talk.
Iain Banks
Eve and the apple was the first great step in experimental science.
James Bridie
I have a very strong sense that we only know where we are by looking clearly at where we've come from.
Sara Sheridan
It is well if you go in for revenge to make it as complete as possible.("The Vengeance Of The Dead")
Robert Barr
I crossed the yard, wherein the constellations looked down upon me, I could have thought, with wonder, the first creature of that sort that their unsleeping vigilance had yet disclosed to them; I stole through the corridors, a stranger in my own house; and coming to my room, I saw for the first time the appearance of Edward Hyde.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I believe you to be strictly honorable.'He thoughtfully emptied his cup. 'I wish I could add you were intelligent,' he went on, knocking on his head with his knuckles.
Robert Louis Stevenson
You had better not open that door.
George MacDonald
That there was no God was a given, as far as Hope was concerned, and being nice to people and making the most of your life struck her as a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from it, and in any case what she wanted to do. But besides the spires of theology and the watch-towers of ideology, it seemed a very shaky hut indeed, and not one that offered her much shelter or would stand up in court.She couldn't see a way to make her objection to the fix a deduction from any body of thought. It came from a body of flesh, her own, and that was enough for her. She doubted that this would be enough for anyone else.
Ken MacLeod
The smog curled between the streetlamps and the spokes of the wrought iron framework. It seemed through your body and into your bones.
Sara Sheridan
There is something about the very idea of a city which is central to the understanding of a planet like Earth, and particularly the understanding of that part of the then-existing group-civilization which called itself the West. That idea, to my mind, met its materialist apotheosis in Berlin at the time of the
Iain M. Banks
Modern man has successfully razed the imaginative landscapes of primal peoples the whole world over. Kill the gods first, slaughter the sacred animals, rewrite the mythologies, and build roads through the holy places. Do all this and watch the people decline. Without souls, they soon die, leaving dead shells, zombie cultures, shambling aimlessly towards oblivion.
Grant Morrison
Guess that's thirty-one pieces of silver you've got now, huh? Sleep well, Judas.
Mark Millar
I might have changed, but that did not mean the sport had.
David Millar
Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so many have done, shouting question after question into the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no Answer but an Echo. It is all a grim howling of wild beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men...(The Everlasting No)
Thomas Carlyle
Seeds of doubt, once planted, will grow.
Lesley Lokko
When in doubt about who's to blame. Blame the English.
Craig Ferguson
Then there rose up before her a vision of a parish saved, a village reformed, a county reorganised, and a triumphant election at the end, the recompense and crown of all, which should put the government of the country itself, to a certain extent, into competent hands.
Mrs. Oliphant
... Miss Marjoribanks was of the numerous class of religionists who keep up civilities with heaven, and pay all the proper attentions, and show their respect for the divine government in a manner befitting persons who know the value of their own approbation.
Mrs. Oliphant
There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.
Mrs. Oliphant
Time makes fools of us all. Our only comfort is that greater shall come after us.
Eric Temple Bell
There is a great deal in choosing colours that go well with one's complexion. People think of that for their dresses, but not for their rooms., which are of so much more importance. I should have liked blue, but blue gets so soon tawdry. I think, (...) that I have enough complexion at present to venture upon a pale spring green.
Mrs. Oliphant
As she stepped into the steamboat at Dover which was to convey her to scenes so new, Lucilla felt more and more that she who held the reorganisation of society in Carlingford in her hands was a woman with a mission.
Mrs. Oliphant
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Adam Smith