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"Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA."
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"In crime books it's possible to chart forensic technology by how well it has to be explained to a reader. In mid-Victorian crime novels fingerprinting has to be explained because it's new. Nowadays it's part of our world and we can simply assume that knowledge if we write about it."
Author Name
Personal Development
"From the tens of thousands of criminals I have mixed with behind bars and in the streets or have known of over the last three decades of my criminally active life, the Eighties, Nineties and Naughties, I have selected the crème de la crème of the toughest, maddest, hardest Scottish bastards that have ever drawn breath."
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Personal Development
"Once the cons were in the cell, they'd pull razors or homemade daggers out and rob the YOs of their trainers, leather jackets or jewellery. You couldn't placate them; it would be akin to expecting not to be bitten from a Rhodesian Ridgeback whilst petting it! Bar L was full of rough, colourful and out-of-control junkies who wouldn't think twice about stabbing you or slashing you just to get what you had on your feet to pay for their next hit of smack."
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Personal Development
"When Barlinnie's Prison doctor, Dr Danson, came to see Dingus, he turned in disgust at the state Dingus was left to lie in. Doctor Danson refused to treat him as he knew Dingus's injuries were life threatening, he told the top warden that Dingus would need to be rushed to Glasgow Royal Infirmary for emergency surgery. The screws in the seg block refused to listen to the doctor, they pushed and manhandled their own doctor out of Dingus's cell and threatened him with a severe beating if he made anything public about Dingus's injuries."
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Personal Development
"Despotism is a long crime."
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Personal Development
"As equally as one may use size, the cunning James Crosbie was once classified as the most dangerous man in Scotland, notorious for his daring bank robberies and escaping on a bicycle. He was the criminal mastermind behind many successful crimes carried out throughout the UK."
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Personal Development
"They ask themselves: "What will he do? "How will he react? "Will he go mad? "Will he bite? "Will he be armed? They're pumped up with fear. Adrenaline pumping, fingers tense on the trigger, brains racing. And I'm cool as a cat! The name 'Charles Bronson' causes panic! The name 'Mickey Peterson' causes stress! The police all love to arrest me, as I'm the most exciting madman they will ever arrest! It's a fact. So here I am years later, and I'm still the madman. There is no escaping my past."
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Personal Development
"I pulled the homemade jail knife out that I had in my hand, Porkie pulled out the very sharp lockback knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor, and if they did as we told them then no one would get hurt."
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Personal Development
"Big Rab has worked in Barlinnie's Wendy House for over seven and a half years. The average time a screw works in the seg blocks is two years, this man has seen it and done it all. Most prisoners will agree, he isn't a dog either but can be when he wants. He has had legendary roll abouts with some of Scotland's hardest criminals but at the end of it he doesn't hold any grudges."
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Personal Development
"Although I had committed just about every sort of assault imaginable on people and even the odd one or two against the police, I still had and still do have respect for the old school policeman."
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"Unfortunately, I'm not a person that's always capable of living up to the Boy Scout philosophy."
Living
"You can meet a young person who goes to school and is really enthusiastic, but if a sufficiently strong personality convinces them that this is a waste of time, that person might flunk out."
Time
"What we need in America is a renaissance. We need to go forward by going backward."
Progress
"I wanted to get to that aesthetic proposition that comes out of learning the human elements of a world, so that those notes and rhythms mean something to you besides just the academic way in which they fall in place."
Learning
"People don't really think other people are the same."
People
"I also wanted to do something that I hadn't really seen in almost any black novels, which was a complex love story in which both people were extremely intelligent and talented and understood a lot of things and were still at odds getting it together."
Love
"The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war."
War
"When people conclude that all is futile, then the absurd becomes the norm."
People
"Popular culture tells you that schools and parents don't know what's going on, the police are dogs, politicians are all liars and scum, and any crime that's not committed by the Mafia is done by the CIA."
Crime
"When you're artistic director of a program, you present the music you want to present."
Music
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