People From Glasgow

"[stamps his foot, which knocks his drink over] Oh fuck, I did this last night as well!"

"Your parents choosing your fucking marriage partner - don't be ridiculous! Fucking stupid! "That's her over there, son." "Which one? They're all the fucking same, dad! Black with a wee fucking window!""

"53 fucking virgins! [laughs] The very thought of 53 fucking virgins, it's a nightmare! It's not a fucking present, it's not a prize - it's a punishment! Give me two fire-breathing whores any day of the week! I'm a slut man!"

"Religion is over, lads, it's fucking over. Take your reformation, your Vatican, your fucking Mecca and fuck off. Suicide fucking bombing, there's a bright idea! Every time there's a bang, the world's a wanker short! Fucking idiots! I want to see the instructor: "Right, lads, I'm only going to show you this once..." Fucking pricks! And it depends on what newspaper you read, how many virgins you get for blowing yourself up. How are you gonna shag them when you're now flying mince?!"

"Christians shouldn't be allowed near rock and roll. It's not for them! It's not fucking for them! They should all join the Brothers of the Beige or some fucking thing - "The Beige Sisters of Premenstrual Agony." The fucking...! You see them - Christian rock! Is there such a fucking absurdity in the world? [makes screeching noises imitating a metal guitar, then speaks quietly] "He is my saviour!" That's not rock and roll! That's Youth Club Table Tennis fucking crap! Rock and roll is [shrieking] "I AM THE DEVIL AND I WANNA FUCK YOUR MOTHER!""

"I stood on a stone fish once." "Oh yeah, how was it?" "Worst fucking pain known to man." "Have you known a lot of pain?" "Aye, I fell off my bike once."

"Apparently the only way to avoid a sudden agonising death, is to walk around in tights with a bottle of vinegar. I'd rather be fucking dead!"

"There's nothing better than a fight, especially when you're watching it from a safe place. You can yell encouragement! Hit him with the left, he's a big Jessie!"

"No children were abused in the making of this show. No one was hurt and no Islamic cartoons were used. You know, for those of you that can't take a fucking joke."

"I was always confused with what was near-sight and what was far-sight. Now I'm not confused at all: I've got both, I don't give a fuck which is which."

"My advice to you, if you want to lose a bit of weight: don't eat anything that comes in a bucket. Buckets are the kitchen utensils of the farmyard."

"The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things... after the weather."

"Politically correct is the language of cowardice."

"I leave you with a complaint. Now, the country is in a terrible state, and you've blamed it on a number of things: Unemployment rate, the value of the pound and all that... well, it's because the national anthem is boring."

"There is no such thing as bad language: it's just our morals that are fucked."

"Apparently, women need to feel loved to have sex, and men need to have sex to feel loved, so the basic act of continuing the species requires a lie from one of you."

"I used to be a folk singer, but I was... dreadful. I had a voice like a goose farting in the fog."

"Look at this way: if we all ate one person, the problem would be halved over-night. Think about it: I could eat someone you don't like, you could eat someone I don't like... where's the fucking damage?"

"Toblerones! It's impossible to eat a fucking Toblerone without hurting yourself!"

"Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, "Did you fall?" He said, "No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.""

"I know at least... oh my God, at least 127 words. And I still prefer "Fuck"."

"Don't vote, it just encourages them."

"You've made a happy man very old."

"The working classes, the ones they refer to in those political programmes as "the ordinary people""

"(To audience members who were arriving late) You haven't missed a thing, I was just killing time 'til you got here."

"I thought, wow, those people are showing off like me, that’s what I do at home. I can do that and get paid. That was my first realisation that maybe I wasn’t going to be a secretary or a postwoman or a lollipop woman. I did have a moment of thinking I liked the lollipop woman idea. But can you imagine? I would be like, ‘F**king move your car!’ I don’t think that would work."

"“A good antidote to nostalgia is to go home, and then you remember why you left.”"

"“I've always been a gurner. I tried to reel it in. You know there was a period when I thought I was going to be a really serious actress, but the gurning... I can't get in control of it. It just runs away with me.”"

"“I have no real ambition or strategy. If this was all to finish, it's totally fine. There's a lot more to do out there than put on silly frocks and shout for a living.”"

"There are times when you come across somebody that’s really impressive, someone that’s got a proper living and really does make a difference to people’s lives. Then I do feel a bit of a wanker, admitting I’m an actress. That’s hard to say to someone who may be making a difference. But I don’t know how I could change things."

"“I always say: 'If I'm lucky enough to be given the opportunity to work again, that's it, I'm being wheeled on, sitting on a sofa, and someone's going to feed me grapes, and I'm not getting up.'”"

"“It's good for me to pull away from something that is just done for effect, which was basically Sue White in 'Green Wing.' In that, it was very much: if in trouble, gurn, or fall down. There was no character background to Sue. You didn't know who she was. She didn't have any toehold in any kind of reality.”"

"“I have no interest in being a celebrity. I wouldn't go to anything that I wasn't involved in just for the sake of wearing a nice frock and having my picture taken. That part of the business doesn't make me feel very comfortable.”"

"“I feel so Scottish when I go abroad, and I'm so proud of it, but for me, it's not a political statement - I just happen to be Scottish.”"

"I was trying to explain that this is actually a proper job but just feeling terribly ridiculous as real doctors and real patients were wheeled past," Gomez says, "There are moments when you think: what am I doing with my life?"

"“When you get older, everybody sort of changes and moves away. I think that stands the test of time, when you have a friendship from youth that's still in your life today.”"

"I am a plain practical man, not one of your theorists and splitters of hairs and choppers of logic."

"The Golden Bough (not to speak of the many other anthropological volumes) is one of those books which have a tremendously vitalising and fertilising effect upon a branch of human knowledge. It is not unworthy of comparison with The Origin of Species. Both books consist largely of an immense number of facts, collected and related with immense patience; in both the generalisations from this vast accumulation of facts are made with extreme caution and even reluctance, and at the same time they have a kind of cosmic range and relevance. To many people Frazer seemed to do for the mental evolution of the human race what Darwin had done for its physical evolution. Whatever be the ultimate judgment upon his method and conclusions, there can be no doubt of the profound effect that he has had upon the science of anthropology."

"Frazer is much more savage than most of his savages, for they are not as far removed from the understanding of spiritual matter as a twentieth-century Englishman. His explanations of primitive practices are much cruder than the meaning of these practices themselves."

"Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors."

"I still possess the complete edition of Frazer's The Golden Bough which Aubrey gave me at that time, and which opened my eyes to the ritualistic origins of theatre, affecting considerably the way I was later to conceive of opera."

"Frazer, Harrison and the others took the politeness out of myths and released them from the tameness of mere decoration. They saw them as reflecting the bare substructures of society and of its rituals; and they emphasised the irrational, dark elements of myth (in keeping with the age of Nietzsche). For them, Dionysus was not only the merry god of wine, he was the god whose possessed followers tore living creatures into bloody fragments."

"When the history of British anthropology during the last half century or something more comes to be written, it will be found that three names stand clear away from those of their contemporaries—Tylor, Haddon, and Frazer. Each of these men represents an aspect of the science of man: Tylor as the initiator of general ethnology in the modern critical sense; Haddon receiving the torch and begetting (with Rivers's help) a school of precise field anthropology; Frazer, the supreme interpreter on the literary side of man's hopes, fears, and beliefs, his relations with his gods, his fellows, and with his own soul."

"The long avenues of thought that have led from Frazer's Golden Bough seem to start physically in front of the dining-room fireplace of the home where as a boy of 15 I sat hour after hour absorbing first the one-volume abridgment and then the three-volume edition. I cannot imagine how different my mental and religious life would have been if the impact of J. G. Frazer had come at another time or not at all."

"I remember the shock, the combined shock of interest and almost of horror, with which The Golden Bough burst upon classical scholars like me when it first appeared in 1890. Of course it was not quite our first introduction to anthropology. We knew something of Tylor and Andrew Lang and perhaps Mannhardt, perhaps even of Robertson Smith's sacred camel which had to be eaten alive before sunrise. But Frazer, for one thing, overpowered us with his mass of carefully ordered facts. We had heard of "the beastly devices of the heathen" but had not realised their great number and variety, had not understood the method which underlay their madness."

"But just occasionally an epic reference book is so beautifully written that it actually inspires artistic creativity. Think of how T. S. Eliot acknowledged his huge debt to J. G. Frazer's anthropological masterpiece, The Golden Bough, in the preface to The Waste Land. And rightly so: I am currently reading a new paperback edition of Frazer's monumental study of ritual slayings (invaluable background for anybody working in a newspaper office), and it has lost none of its stupendous evocative power in the 80 years since it was finished."

"The case for Frazer—who like Spencer is rather under a cloud to-day—is too complex and technical to be argued briefly here. His use of the comparative method on an enormous scale can be faulted, though the fascinating detail it reveals and the charm of his Augustan style ensure that he is still read. His industry was truly Darwinian, and I believe that his success in subsuming vast masses of data under a few leading ideas was considerable. Unfortunately the anti-evolutionary reaction, largely led by Malinowski, has resulted in neglect of Frazer's achievement. Such a reaction was not surprising, for hypothetical yet untestable evolutionary theories had multiplied endlessly in the early years of the present century. In rejecting these a new freedom was gained, but, alas, much that was solid in the work of a Frazer or a Westermack was forgotten."

"In this work of revealing to us the full human meaning of Greek and Latin culture, Frazer started with his classical interests. The six volumes of his Pausanias give us a vision of ancient Greece as it was in the times of Imperial Rome. In his Golden Bough, starting from one of the most inexplicable and barbarous customs recorded from Latium, Frazer gives us the theory of primitive culture and of the rational savagery of human faith, a theory which will for ever remain a master piece of comparative anthropology."

"If we define, then an anthropologist as one who passionately loves the continuity of tradition and works for its preservation and development, who also brings to this task a profound knowledge of our own mythology as well as of the superstitions of other savages—Sir James Frazer is the greatest anthropologist of our age."

"The Golden Bough, compared by Virgil to the mistletoe but now revealing some affinity to the banyan, has not only waxed a great tree but has spread to a spacious and hospitable forest, whose king receives homage in many tongues from a multitude resorting thither for its fruit or timber or refreshing shade. There they find learning mated with literature, labour disguised in ease, and a museum of dark and uncouth superstitions invested with the charm of a truly sympathetic magic. There you have gathered together, for the admonition of a proud and oblivious race, the scattered and fading relics of its foolish childhood, whether withdrawn from our view among savage folk and in different countries, or lying unnoticed at our doors. The forgotten milestones of the road which man has travelled, the mazes and blind alleys of his appointed progress through time, are illuminated by your art and genius, and the strangest of remote and ancient things are brought near to the minds and hearts of your contemporaries."