Scotland Quotes

“Excuse me?”
The librarian looked up again.
“I need help now. I need to print this article and . . . do you have any books about dukes?”
The librarian’s eyes went wide and she rubbed her hands together with glee. “We have a fantastic romance section,” she said. “Do you need recommendations? How do you like your dukes? Grumpy? Tortured? Alpha, beta, or alpha in the streets, beta in the sheets?”
“Actually, I meant nonfiction,” Portia said glumly.
The librarian sighed. “Aye. Just a warning, love—the non-fic dukes are not nearly as fun.”
― Alyssa Cole, A Duke by Default

“There are two seasons in Scotland: June and Winter”
― Billy Connolly

“Wee Archie was wielding a shepherd's crook that, as Tommy remarked later, no shepherd would be found dead with, and he was wearing a kilt that no Highlander would dream of being found alive in.”
― Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands

“Weather here in this part of the world is just as moody, just as subjective and disloyal, as people.”
― Jackie Kay, Trumpet

“Fortune, if thou’ll but gie me still
Hale breeks, a scone, an whisky gill,
An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will,
Take a’ the rest,
An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill
Directs thee best.”
― Robert Burns, Selected Poems

“Scotland had no need of a 'resistant nationalism' precisely because it was an imperial nation engaged in projecting its national culture to the world. The historical problem of Scotland's 'absent nationalism' in the nineteenth century is a non-problem because far from lacking a nationalism, Scottish nationalism was vigorously engaged on imposing itself wherever Scots had achieved a determining or a significant role within the territory of the British Empire. Scottish nationalism did not need to assert itself within the British state because the 'world was its field', and its aim was to make Scotland the spiritual core of the imperial project.”
― Cairns Craig, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence

“Ayer rece durante todo el camino colina arriba, no para que te quedaras, no me parecía correcto. Rezaba para tener la fortaleza necesaria para dejar que te fueras. Dije <>, ha sido el momento mas difícil, sassenach.”
― Diana Gabaldon, Outlander

“Among those who could read, books were prized possessions. Words on paper were powerful magic, seductive as music, sharp as a knife at times, or gentle as a kiss. Friendships and love affairs blossomed as men and women read to each other in summer meadows and winter kitchens. Pages were ambrosia in their hands. A new novel or collection of poems was something everybody talked about. Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shakespeare, Bronte, Austen, Dickens, Keats, Emerson, Cooper, Thoreau, Hawthorne, and Twain. To read these authors was to go on a grand adventure and see things as you never had before, see yourself as you never had before.”
― Kim Heacox, John Muir and the Ice That Started a Fire: How A Visionary And The Glaciers Of Alaska Changed America

“Glasgow is maybe the most bullshit-free place on earth. I think I call it "the antidote to the rest of the world."

It's so unapologetically working class and attitude-free. Everyone's looking "to take the piss out of you," as they put it. They're all comedians, and tough. They don't put on airs.”
― Anthony Bourdain

“And once the others started shouting too, she stopped speaking and just watched. Pleased, as if it was what she had wanted all the time. That hate spreading like a wild fire on the hill.’ A pause. ‘It was as if she was drunk on the power.”
― Ann Cleeves, Hidden Depths

“You do know that I can’t just will mythical beings into existence, right?”
“Not with that attitude, you can’t.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Lost Souls

“For Scotland is made out of cities and the country and the sea, which means
It's so much more, as an imagined space, a geography of the mind,
Than its centres of population. Demographics are never enough
And the way in which this might best be imagined starts
In the work of Hugh MacDiarmid. And the poets and artists
Who followed from that. Not as disciples. As students. As witnesses
As thinking men and women, who understand the depths, complexities
Subtleties and strengths and the cosmic clock,
All the resources there, and all the risks required.

from 'Scotland's Voices”
― Alan Riach, Landmarks: Poets, Portraits and Landscapes of Modern Scotland

“The second time I try to kill a man I'm fourteen. Killing a man seems a very grown-up thing to do - like writing in Biro.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Maggie, tou made it possible -but not probably for me to be the man I am now.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Mary the Canary lives in a cloud of perfume and colours. She's an auxiliary nurse by day and a country and western singer by night: bed pans and power ballass. She's so glamorous she makes Mrs Hart look plain. She is the other woman and I'm bring trained to hate her even though I've never met her.”
― Damian Barr, Maggie & Me

“Equal marriage makes a huge impact, because people see gay people being allowed to be happy,” he says. “And these events involve families – and not just families but caterers and florists and hotels. And all these people are forced to accept that here are two people who are in love and want to build a family together . . . But I’m not complacent. Progress can falter, and rights can be taken away, and people can be repressed again very easily.”
― Damian Barr, Out There: An Anthology of Scottish LGBT writing

“To rouse the countra frae the caul' morality o' a deid moderation.”
― William Alexander, Johnny Gibb of Gushetneuk in the Parish of Pyketillim, with Glimpses of the Parish Politics about AD 1843

“Scott and Terry created a political theatre in which a Hanovarian English monarch could appear on the stage of Edinburgh to act the part of a Stuart king.”
― Cairns Craig, The Wealth of the Nation: Scotland, Culture and Independence

“V slowly pulled her toward him. “You’re beautiful in the moonlight.”
― Donna Grant, Ignite

“Just because you love someone doesna preclude you from hurting them.”
― Donna Grant, Ignite

“To observe the kingdom of Scotland in 1513 in terms of the strength of the Crown, its relations with its magnates, the quality and administration of its justice, its economy, foreign relations, culture and religious life, is to see a community at some remove from the leaderless country inherited by James I in 1424; yet it is also to see a country still strongly tied to its ancient traditions, customs and ethnic divisions which it either could not, or would not, abandon. By 1513 the Crown was strong, popular, its position in society unassailable. It had both sought and obtained the co-operation of its nobility who were themselves closely bound together by bonds of alliance, and whose status in society was recognised by the strength and closeness its kin groups. It had introduced some useful, constructive statutes and had strengthened its legal procedures. It had sought to inform its legal officers of the body of the law. New and more efficient methods of land registration and of royal revenue collection had been the direct result of the reorganisation of the Chancery, the Exchequer, and of the Secretariat of the Privy Seal. Its economy was buoyant enough to enable a protected merchant class to trade modestly with the Baltic states through Denmark, with Southern Europe through its Staple in Flanders, with England and France. Through its many embassies abroad it pursued, as far as possible, constructive peace treaties with the major European powers.”
― Leslie J. MacFarlane, William Elphinstone and the Kingdom of Scotland, 1431 - 1514: The Struggle for Order

“There were rat footprints in the dried lard in the frying pan. Sometimes the rats woke me, but this time I had slept through their visit. They were now a fact of life, like dogs or pigeons.

It was Raeberry Street, Maryhill, Glasgow in 1975. The cleansing department was on strike, and mountains of plastic bags full of garbage were piled in the back courts of the crumbling tenements. The flats didn’t have bathrooms or hot water, just closet-sized toilets.”
― Barry Graham, When the Light-Bulb Is Bare: Essays on Horror and Noir

“I groaned as me limbs grew to immense proportions an' me neck stretched. Moss-coloured scales emerged upon me slick skin. Me snout elongated and me teeth sharpened to the size o' small dirks.”
― K.V. Wilson, Guardian

“The preachers quickly learned that he could trade biblical quotations with them almost indefinitely. It was equally pointless to cite the standard Presbyterian authorities. James denounced John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion as 'childish', dismissed John Knox as 'a knave' who ha called 'his mother a whore', and informed the minister who claimed a divine warrant to preach that 'the office of prophets was ended'. The preachers could only suffer his sarcasm in silence.”
― Thomas Cogswell, James I: The Phoenix King

“Is this one of those bizarre instances where someone stepped on a bug and accidentally rewove the tapestry of fate? Because I'm pretty sure if the universe were in any sort of proper alignment, I would not have ended up in Colin Ward's arms in a hotel room in Inverness.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Trashy Romance Novel

“The wrath of Scotland beckons, it's no more the 45
The no votes wakened up to you, Scotland is alive
Look at how our parties rise whilst you're in disarray
The undertaker's standing by, Scots will have their say.”
― Paul Colvin, Poems for an Independent Scotland

“There is a type of pie strongly associated with Scotland which has aesthetic and health dangers that justify its inclusion here amongst the sinister pies. It is the Fried Pie - which is just what it says, a baked pie cooked a second time by frying. Scotland is not called the Land of the Brave for nothing.”
― Janet Clarkson, Pie: A Global History

“You know... It’s been a long time since I’ve been that nervous.”
“You were nervous?” I ask. “Why?”
“I’m making love to a romance author,” he explains with a grin. “Your standards are high.”
“My standards are fictional.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Trashy Romance Novel

“We’ll actually be staying several nights in Dunadhar Castle but one night, we’re going to be camping out at Loch Ness, just to see if we can catch a glimpse of Nessie.”
“Branching out, huh?” Mikey asked.
“Don’t tell me you’re not a believer, Mikey.”
“In a massive sea dragon?”
Luke sighed.
Everyone's a skeptic.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Lost Souls

“There, standing before the mausoleum, Michael’s anxiety skyrocketed. His heart raced. His head spun. His stomach turned. For a few moments, he really thought he was going to have to run to the bushes and puke. He’d never heard of a ghost being able to actually curse someone, but he didn’t want to risk it by vomiting on Bluidy Mackenzie’s front lawn.”
― Jacqueline E. Smith, Lost Souls