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Quotes by Scottish Authors
"I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really."
"Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings."
"A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy."
"I played music all through school and I kind of performed that way."
"She had an evil face, smoothed by hypocrisy; but her manners were excellent."
"What you see, but can't see over is as good as infinite."
"I just think the most difficult thing to displace is privilege."
"So, no, I'm not trying to crack into Hollywood, although I'll make films there if they're good scripts."
"A fair day's wages for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of government."
"Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life."
"If a farmer fills his barn with grain, he gets mice. If he leaves it empty, he gets actors."
"He who indulges habitually in the intoxicating pleasures of imagination, for the very reason that he reaps a greater pleasure than others, must resign himself to a keener pain, a more intolerable and utter prostration."
"I'm just looking for that moment to drop my Jedi knickers and pull out my real light saber."
"And, perhaps most importantly, regional conflicts will again and again confront us with a cruel choice between costly engagement and costly indifference."
"The increase of territory and power of empires by force of arms has been the policy of all great powers, and it has always been possible to get the approval of their state religion."
"I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century."
"You reach out your hand, but you're all alone, in those time passages."
"Every time I show up to do something here it's considered a comeback. If I came into town and they didn't call it that, I'd be disappointed."
"Man, in his animal capacity, is qualified to subsist in every climate."
"A small species of pinus was much prized, and, when dwarfed in the manner of the Chinese, fetched a very high price; it is generally grafted on a variety of the stone pine."
"There's a lot of fantasy about what Scotland is, and the shortbread tins and that sort of thing."
"The Chinese, by their favourite system of dwarfing, contrive to make it, when only a foot and a half or two feet high, have all the characters of an aged cedar of Lebanon."
"We are all travelers in the wilderness of this world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend."
"You know, the Oscar I was awarded for The Untouchables is a wonderful thing, but I can honestly say that I'd rather have won the U.S. Open Golf Tournament."
"Even though they won't finish in the top four this season, they will still be of the contenders next season."
"The numbers may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician."
"Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."
"The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised."
"The Wellcome Foundation offered me the chance to establish a small academic research unit, modestly funded, but with total independence. The real opportunity, however, came from King's College, London."
"A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind."
"The most beautiful adventures are not those we go to seek."
"Nothing more strongly arouses our disgust than cannibalism, yet we make the same impression on Buddhists and vegetarians, for we feed on babies, though not our own."
"Conviction is worthless unless it is converted into conduct."
"I'm a professional writer and I consider it part of my job to publicise my work and these days part of that job is done online."
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