playwrights-from-scotland

"Affliction is the wholesome soil of virtue: Where patience, honour, sweet humanity, Calm fortitude, take root, and strongly flourish."

"The human race are sons of sorrow born; And each must have his portion. Vulgar minds Refuse or cranch beneath their load: the brave Bear theirs without repining."

"O grant me, Heaven, a middle state, Neither too humble nor too great; More than enough, for nature's ends, With something left to treat my friends."

"Who has not known ill fortune, never knew Himself, or his own virtue."

"You have sae saft a voice and slid a tongue, You are the darling of baith auld and young."

"A bleezing ingle, and a clean hearthstane."

"A dish of married love right soon grows cauld."

"For when I dinna clearly see, I always own I dinna ken, And that's the way with wisest men."

"Let fowk bode weel, and strive to do their best; Nae mair's required—let Heaven make out the rest."

"The Hindoos, or the followers of the Brahmin faith, are in number far superior to the Mahommedans in Hindustan. The system of religion which they profess is only perfectly known in the effect which it has upon the manners of the people. Mild, humane, obedient, and industrious, they are of all nations on earth the most easily conquered. Their government, like that of all the inhabitants of Asia, is despotic; it is, in such a manner, tempered by the virtuous principles inculcated by their religion, that it seems milder than the most limited monarchy in Europe. Some of the reigning princes trace their families, with clearness, above four thousand years; many of them, in a dubious manner, from the dark period which we place beyond the flood. Revolution and change are things unknown; and assassinations and conspiracies never exist. Penal laws are scarce known among the Hindoos; for their motives to bad actions are few. Temperate in their living, and delicate in their constitutions, their passions are calm, and they have no object but that of living with comfort and ease. Timid and submissive, from the coldness of a vegetable diet, they have a natural abhorrence to blood. Industrious and frugal, they possess wealth which they never use. Those countries, governed by native princes, which lay beyond the devastations of the Mahommedans, are rich, and cultivated to the highest degree. Their governors encourage industry and commerce; and it is to the ingenuity of the Hindoos, we owe all the fine manufactures in the East. During the empire of the Moguls, the trade of India was carried on by the followers of Brahma. The bankers, scribes, and managers of finance were native Hindoos, and the wisest princes of the family of Timur protected and encouraged such peaceable and useful subjects."

"“The Brahmins,” he declared, “contrary to the ideas formed of them in the west, invariably believe in the unity, eternity, omniscience and omnipotence of God: that the polytheism of which they have been accused, is no more than a symbolical worship of the divine attributes…” Further, “The system of religion which they profess is only perfectly known in the effect which it has upon the manners of the people. Mild, humane, obedient, and industrious, they are of all nations on earth the most easily conquered… Revolution and change are things unknown; and assassinations and conspiracies never exists. Penal laws are scarce known among the Hindoos; for their motives to bad actions are few… it is to the ingenuity of the Hindoos, we owe all the fine manufactures in the East.”"

"Even though there’s a massive amount of people of colour now living in Scotland…this country is 30 or 40 years behind any other English city in terms of racial attitudes and integration. There’s no proper acknowledgement of the slave trade and how many Scottish cities were founded on money from that. Our children are just not taught that history."

"For me it was a lot of fun. It was exciting. There were lots of people who came to stay from different parts of the world. You would come down in the morning and there would be different bodies on the floor or on the sofa. There would be Party socials in the house where people would sing songs and recite poems. It was a very social upbringing…"

"I found that being pregnant was different from how I thought it would be…It shares a lot in common with writing in a way. You have an imaginary version of yourself pregnant, and an imaginary baby, an imaginary idea of yourself as a mother…"

"I like the idea that stories are active, that if you stepped on them they would become alive, like plants, and that the same memory can grow new shoots and flowers, and can change over the course of people’s lives…"

"I sat through the first act and heard my lovely lines falling like cold porridge on a damp mattress."

"Some temptations cannot be fought. One must close one's mind and fly from them."

"Even if my country remains at war with yours . . . remember ... I am not your enemy."

"Life is no straight and easy corridor along which we travel free and unhampered, but a maze of passages, through which we must seek our way, lost and confused, now and again checked in a blind alley. But always, if we have faith, a door will open for us, not perhaps one that we ourselves would ever have thought of, but one that will ultimately prove good for us."

"Religions are many, reason is one, we are all brothers."

"Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, but only saps today of its strength."

"Hell is that state where one has ceased to hope."

"You are extraordinarily attractive to women. And your greatest charm is that you do not realise it."

"The hushed winds wail with feeble moan Like infant charity."

"The brave man is not he who feels no fear, For that were stupid and irrational; But he, whose noble soul its fear subdues, And bravely dares the danger nature shrinks from."

"Some men are born to feast, and not to fight; Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field, Still on their dinner turn— Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home, And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword."

"Words of affection, howsoe'er express'd, The latest spoken still are deem'd the best."

"But woman's grief is like a summer storm, Short as it violent is."

"Oh, swiftly glides the bonnie boat, Just parted from the shore, And to the fisher's chorus-note, Soft moves the dipping oar!"

"The tyrant now Trusts not to men: nightly within his chamber The watch-dog guards his couch, the only friend He now dare trust."

"A willing heart adds feather to the heel, And makes the clown a winged Mercury."

"Think'st thou there are no serpents in the world But those who slide along the grassy sod, And sting the luckless foot that presses them? There are who in the path of social life Do bask their spotted skins in Fortune's sun, And sting the soul."

"Sweet sleep be with us, one and all! And if upon its stillness fall The visions of a busy brain, We'll have our pleasure o'er again, To warm the heart, to charm the sight, Gay dreams to all! good night, good night."

"One saw I was alive. Loosened his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear. Between the gap of corpses I could see a child. The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye."

"This is the word tightrope. Now imagine a man, inching across it in the space between our thoughts. He holds our breath.There is no word net.You want him to fall, don't you? I guessed as much; he teeters but succeeds. The word applause is written all over him."

"What do I have to help me, without spell or prayer, endure this hour, endless, heartless, anonymous, the death of love?"

"As anyone who has the slightest knowledge of my work knows, I have little in common with Larkin, who was tall, taciturn and thin-on-top, and unlike him I laugh, nay, sneer, in the face of death. I will concede one point: we are both lesbian poets."

"When you have a child, your previous life seems like someone else's. It's like living in a house and suddenly finding a room you didn't know was there, full of treasure and light."

"Light gatherer. You fell from a star into my lap, the soft lamp at the bedside mirrored in you, and now you shine like a snowgirl, a buttercup under a chin, the wide blue yonder you squeal at and fly in."

"Here. It will blind you with tears like a lover. It will make your reflection a wobbling photo of grief."

"I cannot say where you are. Unreachable by prayer, even if poems are prayers. Unseeable in the air, even if souls are stars."

"There'll be what you might call a moment of inspiration – a way of seeing or feeling or remembering, an instance or a person that's made a large impression. Like the sand and the oyster, it's a creative irritant. In each poem, I'm trying to reveal a truth, so it can't have a fictional beginning"

"Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you. The room is turning slowly away from the moon."

"Not a red rose or a satin heart. I give you an onion. It is a moon wrapped in brown paper. It promises light like the careful undressing of love...I am trying to be truthful."

"Six hours like this for a few francs. Belly nipple arse in the window light, he drains the colour from me. Further to the right, Madame. And do try to be still. I shall be represented analytically and hung in great museums. The bourgeoisie will coo at such an image of a river-whore. They call it Art."

"Work as if you were in the early days of a better nation."

"I asked the headmaster of literature, "Why are there so many headmasters and so few poets? Is it easier for you to train your own kind than ours?" He said, "No. The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart.""

"A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb."

"Gray is in my estimation a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today."

"The first major Scottish novelist since Walter Scott."