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"These three man," Mimi said, "are suspects in a recent theft. Last night, Polly Partial received a shipment of twenty blueberry pies. This morning she counted them and came up short.""How many are missing?" I asked."Last night she had twenty," Harvey said, shutting the station door, "and today she found zero. So at least eighteen are missing.""At least." I agreed."
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"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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Personal Development

"This was a new buzz, better than anything I'd tried before. For the first time, I could fight back at others. I'd even fight with a parked car! I was totally kyboshed on these drugs, I didn't care how many boys were standing outside the pub, I'd run over and fight the lot of them. Even though I came off second best, in my mind, I still walked away a winner. I showed them I wasn't a little shit-bag that always got battered, not when I had the drugs in me."
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"My silence knot is tied up in my hair; as if to keep my love out of my eyes. I cannot speak to one for whom i care. A hatpin serves as part of my disguise. In the play, my role is baticeer; a word which here means "person who trains bats." The audience may feel a prick of fear, as if sharp pins are hidden in thier hats. My co-star lives on what we call a brae. His solitude might not be just an act. A piece of mail fails to arrive one day. This poignant melodrama's based on fact.The curtain falls just as the knot unties; the silence is broken by the one who dies."
Drama


"Yes, I know," Isadora said, and then read her poem, leaning forward so Carmelita Spats would not overhear:"I would rather eat a bowl of vampire batsthan spend an hour with Carmelita Spats."The Baudelaires giggled and then covered their mouths so nobody would know they were laughing at Carmelita."That was great," Klaus said. "I like the part about the bowl of bats."
Humor


"No matter who you are, no matter where you live, and no matter how many people are chasing you, what you don't read is often as important as what you do read."
Learning


"Why does anyone have a lot of rules? So they can boss people around, I guess."
Authority


"Read about things that wouldn't keep you up all night long, weeping and tearing out your hair."
Learning


"Boredom is not black licorice, Snicket," she said. "There's no reason to share it with me."
Humor


"A long time ago, there was no such thing as school, and children spent their days learning a trade, a phrase which here means "standing around doing tedious tasks under the instruction of a bossy adult." In time, however, people realized that the children could be allowed to sit, and the first school was invented."
Education


"One of the most difficult things to think about in life is one's regrets. Something will happen to you, and you will do the wrong thing, and for years afterward you will wish you had done something different."
Regret


"Keep anyone with whom you can read in silence."
Peace


"The library turned out to be a very pleasant place, but it was not the comfortable chairs, the huge wooden bookshelves, or the hush of people reading that made the three siblings feel so good as they walked into the room. It is useless for me to tell you all about the brass lamps in the shapes of different fish, or the bright blue curtains that rippled like water as a breeze came in from the window, because although these were wonderful things they were no what made the three children smile. The Quagmire triplets were smiling, too, and although I have not researched the Quagmires nearly as much as I have the Baudelaires, I can say with reasonable accuracy that they were smiling for the same reason."
Knowledge
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