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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"We can only be used by God after we allow Him to show us the deep, hidden areas of our own character."
"To follow Jesus today is to follow a madman according to the ideals of present day civilization. We have the idea that our civilization is God-ordained, whereas it has been built up by ourselves. We have made a thousand and one necessities until our system of civilized life is as cast iron, and then we apologize to the Lord for not following Him."
"We look upon prayer as a means of getting things for ourselves The Bible idea of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself."
"There is but one art to omit."
"Where did you come from baby dear? Out of the Everywhere into here."
"Am I as spontaneously kind to God as I used to be, or am I only expecting God to be kind to me? Am I full of the little things that cheer His heart over me, or am I whimpering because things are going hardly with me? There is no joy in the soul that has forgotten what God prizes."
"People are so different in wartime. No one gets to be ordinary. Not really."
"For me, writing stories set, well, wherever they're best set, is a form of cultural curiosity that is uniquely Scottish - we're famous for travelling in search of adventure."
"Covert operations relied on the unguarded slip, the unconscious choosing of one word over another."
"And this again, that that insurgent horror was knit to him closer than a wife, closer than an eye; lay caged in his flesh, where he heard it mutter and felt it struggle to be born; and at every hour of weakness, and in the confidence of slumber, prevailed against him, and deposed him out of life."
"Truth in spirit, not truth to the letter, is the true veracity."
"It never cost a disciple anything to follow Jesus, to talk about cost when you are in love with anyone is an insult."
"I remember calling the council's cemetery department to ask about body decomposition in different soil types. Once they had verified that I was a novelist and not a sicko, they were extremely helpful."
"The more I work with the body, keeping my assumptions in a temporary state of reservation, the more I appreciate and sympathize with a given disease. The body no longer appears as a sick or irrational demon, but as a process with its own inner logic and wisdom."
"A sentimentalist is one who delights to have high and devout emotions stirred whilst reading in an arm-chair, or in a prayer meeting, but he never translates his emotions into action. Consequently a sentimentalist is usually callous, self-centred and selfish, because the emotions he likes to have stirred do not cost him anything."
"Britain wouldn't have won the war without its eccentric geniuses."
"I think in our desire to create a better America, we have to have civilized debate in this country and not just yelling."
"You can read Kant by yourself, if you wanted to; but you must share a joke with someone else."
"Like good reading skills, good writing skills require immersion and imaginative engagement."
"On Twitter, people who had read my book followed me and I could see what else they were reading, why they'd liked what I'd written and by the by, more about them than I'd ever elicit from two minutes in a tent at a book festival, stuck behind a signing desk."
"Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion."
"Sometimes people think you're smart if you question the status quo, if nothing else."
"If we indulge in inordinate affection, anger, anxiety, God holds us responsible; but He also insists that we have to be passionately filled with the right emotions."
"We die daily. Happy those who daily come to life as well."
"I'm a novelist by trade and my job is to write a story rather than reconstruct actual events."
"We must remember that God is not occupied with a grand toy of worlds and suns and planets, of attractions and repulsions, of agglomerations and crystallizations, of forces and waves; that these but constitute a portion of his workshops and tools for the bringing out of righteous men and women to fill his house of love withal."
"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."
"You must give him time,' said her grandmother;'and you must be content not to be believed for a while. It is very hard to bear; but I have had to bear it, and shall have to bear it yet. I will take care of what Curdie thinks of you in the end. You must let him go now."
"Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring."
"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."
"Sometimes I create a character from a scrap - a mere mention that has been left behind."
"A time is coming when the whole round world will know that God reigns and that God is Love, when hell and heaven, life and death, sin and salvation, will be read and understood aright at last."
"For my part I travel not to go anywhere but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move."
"The greatest forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended."
"The love of God pays no attention to my prejudices caused by my natural individuality."
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