Scottish Novelist Quotes

J. M. Barrie

Iain Banks

Irvine Welsh

Alistair MacLean

Ian Rankin

Naomi Mitchison

Val McDermid

There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.

Alistair MacLean

The scientific genius is so like the old Hebrew prophet. He singles out the essential from the mass of facts before him, and then - lifts up his eyes.

Margaret Todd (doctor)

Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable.

I wish I were a brewer's horse
Five quarters of a year;
I'd place my head where was my tail,
And drink up all the beer.

Catherine Sinclair

People didn't really like McDonald's, same as her mum didn't really like Catholicism, but when you were new in town, at least it was a known quantity. So that'll be a Quarter-Pounder and a Communion Wafer meal-deal to go.

Christopher Brookmyre

Not even a hand-stitched suit could hide a body gone ruinously to seed. I was tempted to offer some fashion advice, but I didn't think he'd welcome the news that this year, bellies are being worn inside the trousers.

The law don't like jazz clubs. No one wants anything to do with that kind of trouble.

There will always be people like me, who believe that to ripple the pages of a printed book is a special experience, one that through the centuries has taken millions from the darkness into the light.

Quintin Jardine

You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.

We have a right to know the truth; no right to ask anything else from God, but the right to know that.

Most men have a sunny spot to which they look back in their existence, as most have an impossible future, to attain which all their energies are exerted, and their resources employed. The difference between these visionary scenes is this, that they think a good deal of the latter, but talk a good deal of the former.

George Whyte-Melville

The only impregnable citadel of virtue is religion; for there is no bulwark of mere morality, which some temptation may not overtop or undermine, and destroy.

No one can tell, when two people walk closely together, what unconscious communication one mind may have with another

He read the great stone Book whereon is writ The riddle of the world from age to age; Knew the fair marvels of the Zodiac, The stars and their processions; had by heart The elemental truths of chemistry. And zealously, within a mental maze, As dense as that which covered Rosamond, His teacher guarded him against the creeds.

Robert Williams Buchanan

For honesty is before honor; and though man must write his poems in sounding words, God's poems are printed best in the brave and silent duties of common life.

Isabella Fyvie Mayo

There is nothing sorer to the spirit than falling below what one's lover thinks of one.

Naomi Mitchison

Reason shapes the future, but superstition infects the present.

I love doubt in a woman. It's nearly as sexy as determination.