Top 1200 Quotes & Sayings by Scottish Authors - Page 12

When I go fishing I like to know that there's nobody within five miles of me.

But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.

So I just sat in bed for six months - I literally didn't leave the house - and it was the first time that I'd actually experienced being depressed. I'd be sad on and off but I'd never experienced actual depression. Like, crying for no reason. It was really horrible.

Nobody can be whatever they want to be. No kid can do whatever they want to do. It's a total lie. But they have the right to try and do whatever they want to do. That's their right, to aim to do whatever they want to do.

I pluck with my fingernails. If I break a nail, I can't cancel a concert. So I can make a nail out of a ping-pong ball.

I've always been interested in Jewish culture, but never had a chance to dip into it.

I think the silences we have on some issues are inductive of the fact that we need to write about them more, but I think there are some issues you have to write in a sensitive way and in a way that respects the reality of the situation. If you can't do that, you should leave them alone.

When I was a boy, the priest, my uncle, carefully inculcated upon me this proverb, which I then learned and have ever since kept in my mind: 'Dico tibi verum, Libertas optima rerum; Nunquam servili, sub nexu vivito, fili.' 'I tell you a truth: Liberty is the best of things, my son; never live under any slavish bond.'

As a young woman in politics, with few women around, you start to subconsciously behave like men in politics. That comes across as quite hard, tough and humorless, but you're trying to be taken seriously.

There's a part of bohemia I love. The lack of prejudice, the lack of aggression, I love the lack, for the most part, of competitiveness. It's more peaceful.

Sometimes a manager will assess the other team through the warm-up and try to get an inkling as to what way they are going to be playing.

If you look at movies with Cary Grant or Jimmy Stewart and all the rest of it, none of them looks like a boy. They always looked like mature men. The audience didn't want to go and see kids.

Everything I do sort of goes wrong but I always sort of get away with it.

I went for a walk in the Arctic Circle without map or compass. Fortunately, I was only lost for hours, not days.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

See that you buy the field where the Pearl is; sell all, and make a purchase of salvation. Think it not easy: for it is a steep ascent to eternal glory: many are lying dead by the way, slain with security.

I look at the car park and myself and Dave Watson come in with our old cars, and these young lads come in with their new Porches. I think that society has changed, there seems to be a lack of respect nowadays.

A promise made is a debt unpaid.

How sweet the words of Truth, breathed from the lips of Love.

I think TV composers don't get enough credit. I really think it is one of the hardest jobs.

When you're single and in your 20s, you throw on a pair of jeans and look fabulous.

Because I've been around forever and ever, like wallpaper, people ask me for secrets... it's the same with my skin care range; that's out of necessity. As soon as I saw the first signs, I bought everything in the market.

I always have a beard between jobs. I just let it grow until they pay me to shave it. People are quite surprised it's ginger. Sometimes they ask me if dye my hair and I always say 'Wow, no!' I'm 'trans-ginger.'

My name is Brian and I am a troll. An internet troll.

I know a lot of celebrity types go for Kabbalah and Scientology. But why pay 10 per cent of your earnings to someone when it's all common sense: treat others as you'd like to be treated yourself.

The consequence was, that the most sudden and visible good effects were perceived from the use of oranges and lemons; one of those who had taken them, being at the end of 6 days fit for duty.

My favorite time of day is to get up and eat leftovers from dinner, especially spicy food.

I really just like acting. I'm not always aware of what is hip and what is popular and what is zeitgeist.

Tomorrow let us do or die!

Since I moved to Blackpool, I've met a lot of great people, and if it wasn't for them, I wouldn't be as successful as I was because I'm settled off the pitch.

Ronnie O'Sullivan is the only player in history to be dominant and popular at the same time.

Once you're on the wheel, you don't come off.

Look to the past and remember no empire rises that sooner or later won't fall.

At all times, think like a writer, and keep those antennae twitching - that way, you pick up new ideas.

If you travel in time and space, most of the people you know and love will eventually be gone. But you'll also be able to go and find them again.

For in the works of Robert Burns we see the whole cosmos of man's experience and emotion, from zenith to nadir, from birth until death.

I like doom and gloom with a sense of humour. Maybe it's a Scottish thing, we like to undercut indulgence with a laugh.

I get recognised on the phone because it's harder to cover up your voice than your head. You can put a hat on or something, but I can't do accents.

The pop-music video is one of the most powerful communication tools we have. Most people have access to a phone, and you can click a video and absorb it in three minutes. If it's potent enough, you can take in the message or have some sort of experience in multiple dimensions, the music with the image.

You'll never even catch me doing that 'soft atheist' thing of very softly singing along or just mouthing the words, looking down at a hymn sheet every few seconds to check the words. To state the obvious, as an atheist, the hymn sheet is no use to me. So I just stand there, looking straight ahead or up at the ceiling, and do nothing.

I like women. I don't understand them, but I like them.

People think I've got a problem with the press. Actually I have no problem with the press, but just like in football there are a handful who cause problems because they're disrespectful, they're lazy, and above all - and this is what really gets to me - they haven't worked hard to get there.

There are such strong women in my life that there's no chance of me getting too big for my boots.

Return to your friends and tell them that we came here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, and determined to avenge our own wrongs and set our country free. Let your masters come and attack us: we are ready to meet them beard to beard.

No matter what you do, if you're trying to create something new, your environment has a massive impact on you.

The Cold War, Bosnia and Ukraine remind us that peace is fragile. Iraq and Syria remind us that no society or culture is immune from conflict.

Now for my own case, I bless the Lord that, for all that hath been said of me, my conscience doth not condemn me. I do not say I am free of sin, but I am at peace with God through a slain Mediator; and I believe that there is no salvation but only in Christ.

I love theatre. It's far more satisfying than film. Sometimes there's a collective sigh from the audience, or it's so quiet you can hear a pin drop. I couldn't believe how easy acting was when there's an audience; after a few previews I almost couldn't do it without one.

In football you tend to drift away and on to the next job; you bump into someone after two or three years and it's the same as seeing them yesterday.

Our civilization has evolved through the continuous adjustment of society to the stimulus of new knowledge.

We weren't dirt poor, but there was no spare money kicking around. While it was very much understood that the way to a better life was through education, books were a luxury we couldn't afford. But when I was six, we actually moved opposite the central library, and that became my home from home.

I was fantastically well versed by the time I left school. I had a teacher who put 'A Clockwork Orange' my way, and 'Catcher in the Rye.'

A necessary consequent of religious belief is the attaching ideas of merit to that belief, and of demerit to its absence.

I have had the most spoiled golfing life.

I think you can say so much about a character in lots of subtle ways.

There is no such uncertainty as a sure thing.

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.

When you're surrounded by friends and exes, there's a whole lot of stuff that starts crawling out. But however serious and traumatic those experiences may be to the participant, to the onlooker they're hilarious.

I didn't grasp the basic principle of being a promoter, which was: Put on music but also generate an income. I was on the dole most of the time.

Right from the very beginning, I knew I wanted to write palpably Scottish fiction.