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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"History is the essence of innumerable biographies."
"I spend so much time on the screen when I am writing, the last thing you want to do is spend more time on the Internet looking at a screen. That's what I hate about all this technology."
"Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express."
"History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats."
"You don't have to know people personally for them to be role models. Some of my most important role models were historical or literary figures that I only read about - never actually met."
"Every man at the bottom of his heart believes that he is a born detective."
"Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past - they never do; they're too busy."
"If you wish to make a man look noble, your best course is to kill him. What superiority he may have inherited from his race, what superiority nature may have personally gifted him with, comes out in death."
"A shepherd may be a very able, trusty, and good shepherd, without a sweetheart - better, perhaps, than with one. But what is he without his dog?"
"If there be no enemy there's no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown."
"The rude man requires only to see something going on. The man of more refinement must be made to feel. The man of complete refinement must be made to reflect."
"It's different in Scotland. People who come to readings are more interested in literature as such, but the readership in general is really quite diverse. It's a cliche, but it's said that people who read my books don't read any other books, and you do get that element."
"In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment."
"When I'm on stage, it's a little world I've created where I'm sort of the thing, so I have total control over everything that happens. When we're improvising, I'm with someone I totally trust. I know things are going to work out. I don't have those guarantees in life. There are no consequences on stage."
"Acid gave me a clinical, unblinking look at madness, and I discovered I wasn't brave enough to be insane."
"There has been a huge advance in technology, which has improved the safety of the cars incredibly, but there are still some heavy crash impacts and in certain circumstances there is still the chance of fire today."
"And for myself, I think for the present He is calling me to another land; but how long shall be my abode, or what employment He has for me there, I know not, for I cannot think He is taking me there to live and lurk only."
"He was in awe of the thirst that people had for someone to tell them that everything was going to be all right. He marveled at the gullibility and vulnerability of his fellow humans. No wonder the churches called them sheep. They were woolly - headed pack animals being herded around for the benefit of whoever knew how to control the dogs."
"The marketers can compete with free; it just has to be better. Look at bottled water if you don't believe me."
"Mirabelle always ate her lunch on Brighton beach if the weather was in any way passable, but out of sheer principle she never paid tuppence for a chair. We did not win the war to have to pay to sit down, she frequently found herself thinking."
"In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without."
"I wanted to be a doctor at one point and I also wanted to be a pilot. I think if you grow up in a dodgy area, reality often beats down those ambitions as you get older. But with me that never really happened."
"Edinburgh is a great big black bastard of a city where there are ghosts of all kinds."
"He will know from and early age that failure is not disgrace. It's just a pitch that you missed, and you'd better get ready for the next one. The next one might be the shot heard round the world. My son and I are Americans, we prepare for glory by failing until we don't."
"Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge."
"They were singing, Gillette, the best a man can get, with a lot of guys hugging their fathers and sailing and riding bikes. I suddenly felt a long way from the best a man could get and I thought it would be nice to get from there to the best."
"Wherever we are, it is our friends that make our world."
"Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it."
"I don't have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I've done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that's mostly what I'm offered."
"Mmm, I love Yoda. I didn't like Jar Jar Binks though, he was all wrong."
"The call of God is a call according to the nature of God; where we go in obedience to that call depends entirely on the providential circumstances which God engineers, and is not of any moment. The danger is to fit the call of God into the idea of our own discernment and say, "God called me there. If we say so and stick to it, then it is good-bye to the development of the life of God in us."
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