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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"The jungle is alive. It's dangerous as a living nightmare and brimful of hostility."
"If through a broken heart God can bring His purposes to pass in the world, then thank Him for breaking your heart."
"You became the sum total of where you lived, where you shopped, which church you went to, how many kids you had and which taxi company you used, and you only associated with people who had the same responses on their list."
"True humor springs not more from the head than from the heart. It is not contempt; its essence is love. It issues not in laughter, but in still smiles, which lie far deeper."
"Experience is the best of schoolmasters only the school-fees are heavy."
"With every morn my life afresh must breakThe crust of self, gathered about me fresh;That thy wind-spirit may rush in and shakeThe darkness out of me, and rend the meshThe spider-devils spin out of the flesh-Eager to net the soul before it wake,That it may slumberous lie, and listen to the snake."
"Endurance is patience concentrated."
"We are home to each other now."
"Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind."
"No iron chain, or outward force of any kind, can ever compel the soul of a person to believe or to disbelieve."
"A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one."
"The writing talent of Edinburgh is textured - we have poets, novelists, non-fiction writers, dramatists and more."
"Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others."
"People see what they expect to see."
"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."
"The person who can not bear with a sick man or a baby is not fit to be a woman."
"Writers are, as a profession, nothing if not eccentric."
"It is one of the benchmarks of a culture I always think " the page at which it operates. A good way to measure it is to order a taxi and see how irate local people get if it is late."
"They say cowardice is infectious; but then argument is, on the other hand, a great emboldener."
"Prayer is God's answer to our poverty not a power we exercise to obtain an answer."
"When you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time."
"As a novelist it is my job to tell stories that inspire and entertain but I am increasingly mindful that many of these historical tales (which of themselves are fascinating) relate directly to our issues in society today."
"Paper and ink are all but trash, if I cannot find the thought which the writer did think."
"I pride myself on making my own decisions, sir," she said. "I do not welcome gentlemen making them for me."
"I 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."
"Today women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted."
"But besides that I was of an unforgiving disposition from my birth, slow to take offense, slower to forget it, and now incensed both against my companion and myself."
"When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze."
"Oblige me by telling me where I am.""That is impossible. You know nothing about whereness. The only way to come to know where you are is to begin to make yourself at home."
"It's part of a writer's job to be nosy about everything."
"A writer can live by his writing. If not so luxuriously as by other trades, then less luxuriously. The nature of the work he does all day will more affect his happiness than the quality of his dinner at night. Whatever be your calling, and however much it brings you in the year, you could still, you know, get more by cheating. We all suffer ourselves to be too much concerned about a little poverty; but such considerations should not move us in the choice of that which is to be the business and justification of so great a portion of our lives; and like the missionary, the patriot, or the philosopher, we should all choose that poor and brave career in which we can do the most and best for mankind."
"When you fake emotion for a living, when you make your money providing fantasies for other people, tuning into their worlds and indulging them, you don't invite someone into your world very easily."
"It occurred to me that as a man I could do anything, everything I wanted."
"Discouragement is disillusioned self-love, and self-love may be love for my devotion to Jesus- not love for Jesus Himself."
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