Quotes by Scottish/Scotland authors (page 44)

"I loved Japan. I used to read a lot about it when I was a child. And I always wanted to go. And it was delightful. I absolutely loved it. What a smashing place"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I love Los Angeles. It reinvents itself every two days"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I don't know why I should have to learn Algebra... I'm never likely to go there"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I don't have wild dogs chasing people with scripts away from my door. I get my share. I've done okay. But I usually do independent stuff because that's mostly what I'm offered"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I don't believe in angels, no. But I do have a wee parking angel. It's on my dashboard and you wind it up. The wings flap and it's supposed to give you a parking space. It's worked so far"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"I don't believe in angels and I have trouble with the whole God thing. I don't want to say I don't believe in God, but I don't think I do. But I believe in people who do"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"Fame is being asked to sign your autograph on the back of a cigarette packet"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint"

Billy Connolly, Comedian

"Ye are brothers, ye are men, and we conquer but to save"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"What millions died that Caesar might be great!"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"Tomorrow let us do or die!"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"To bear is to conquer our fate"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"Tis distance lends enchantment to the view, and robes the mountain in its azure hue"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, that never mused on sorrow but its own"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"I'll meet the raging of the skies, but not an angry father"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"And muse on Nature with a poet's eye"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"An original something, dear maid, you would wish me to write; but how shall I begin? For I'm sure I have not original in me, Excepting Original Sin"

Thomas Campbell, Poet

"Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse"

Robert W. Service, Poet

"The only society I like is rough and tough, and the tougher the better. There's where you get down to bedrock and meet human people"

Robert W. Service, Poet

"It isn't the mountain ahead that wears you out; it's the grain of sand in your shoe"

Robert W. Service, Poet

"I remember little of the Yukon or what I wrote there"

Robert W. Service, Poet

"I have an intense dislike for artificial society. In France, one could lead a free life - to do what one wanted to do without interference or criticism from one's neighbors"

Robert W. Service, Poet

"What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"I am not a modern man, I am just a wee old fashioned one"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

"But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still"

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Poet

Page 44 of 46

Quotes by Scottish authors