top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Scottish Authors
"These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves."
"Monkeys who very sensibly refrain from speech, lest they should be set to earn their livings."
"Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there."
"I'd like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit."
"In all the antique religions, mythology takes the place of dogma; that is, the sacred lore of priests and people... and these stories afford the only explanation that is offered of the precepts of religion and the prescribed rules of ritual."
"There is not to be found, in all history, any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education and learning, as to secure us against all delusion in themselves."
"One cannot imagine Scots music and song without the contribution of Burns."
"The boy can do anything, but to be the star of the World Cup you have got to get to the final and win it!"
"To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years and to take rank not as a prophet but as an unteachable brat well birched and none the wiser."
"I have become very aware how under-represented are the stories of the underprivileged and undervalued. Our records are, in general, very male and if not always the material of the rich, certainly (for obvious reasons) the material of the literate."
"I think your life is governed not by the bricks or mortar around you, it's governed by who holds your hand and who spits in your eye."
"My sole focus as far back as I can remember was all about my dream to become a singer."
"See, what you're meant to do when you have a mid-life crisis is buy a fast car, aren't you? Well, I've always had fast cars. It's not that. It's the fear that you're past your best. It's the fear that the stuff you've done in the past is your best work."
"How can my son not be straight after all I've said and done for him?"
"I kind of embarked on a fruitless search to find information about my character, Frederick Aiken. And it was fruitless, unfortunately, because there's so little about him."
"The advantages found in history seem to be of three kinds, as it amuses the fancy, as it improves the understanding, and as it strengthens virtue."
"Nearly every country in the world is now becoming industrialized as rapidly as it can."
"I'm honestly as happy writing Superman Adventures as I am writing Wanted."
"The Mole had long wanted to make the I acquaintance of the Badger. He seemed, by all accounts, to be such an important personage and, though rarely visible, to make his unseen influence felt by everybody about the place."
"I'm not a born writer, and I don't enjoy writing."
"One must verify or expel his doubts, and convert them into the certainty of Yes or NO."
"America truly is the best idea for a country that anyone has ever come up with so far. Not only because we value democracy and the rights of the individual, but because we are always our own most effective voice of descent....We must never mistake disagreement between Americans on political or moral issues to be an indication of their level of patriotism. If you don't like what I say or don't agree with where I stand on certain issues, then good. I'm glad we're in America, and don't have to oppress each other over it. We're not just a nation, we're not an ethnicity. We are a dream of justice that people have had for a thousand years."
"Worse there cannot be; a better, I believe, there may be, by giving energy to the capital and skill of the country to produce exports, by increasing which, alone, can we flatter ourselves with the prospect of finding employment for that part of our population now unemployed."
"I love doing crosswords, it's so important to keep the brain going."
"Onstage I do all the stuff I'd never do in real life, like lashing out at people who make me mad or freaking out in a long bank lineup. Performing allows me to fulfill all the sicko fantasies I've ever had."
"However, if I can expand this to Top Cow or Avatar I'm helping the sales, however small, on my Marvel books because I'm almost certain to pick up some new readers."
"I see no reason for giving the capital employed in agriculture greater protection than the capital vested in other branches of trade, manufacture, or commerce."
"The dissolution of the nation destroys the national religion, and dethrones the national deity."
"Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence."
"The artist finds, that the more he can confine his attention to a particular part of any work, his productions are the more perfect, and grow under his hands in the greater quantities."
"That's the one for my tombstone... Here lies David Byrne. Why the big suit?"
"Without the power of the Industrial Union behind it, Democracy can only enter the State as the victim enters the gullet of the Serpent."
"Do not have as your motive the desire to be known as a praying man. Get an inner chamber in which to pray where no one knows you are praying shut the door and talk to God in secret."
"There is but one honest limit to the rights of a sentient being; it is where they touch the rights of another sentient being."
"Sometimes people say to you that you should try to be in a bigger film, but it's the way it pans out."
bottom of page