Quotes from James Kelman

Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers.

But lassies are trained for it, in a manner of speaking; it's part of the growing-up process for them, young females. It doesn't happen with boys, just if you're a lassie, you've got to learn how not to talk; plus how not to look, you get trained how not to look. How not to look and how not to talk. You get trained how not to do things.

Waiting rooms. Ye go into this room where ye wait. Hoping's the same. One of these days the cunts'll build entire fucking buildings just for that. Official hoping rooms, where ye just go in and hope for whatever the fuck ye feel like hoping for.

Folk take a battering but, they do; they get born and they get brought up and they get fuckt. That's the story; the cot to the fucking funeral pyre.

Funny how ye tell people a story to make a point and ye fail, ye fail, a total disaster. Not only do ye no make yer point it winds up the exact fucking opposite man, the exact fucking opposite. That isnay a misunderstanding it's a total whatever.

There existed very long saxophones from years ago. The player sat on their chair like a cellist; that same sort of feeling to it as well - unlike for example the way a harpist would be: the whole act differing in a very fundamental sense. Although harpists are fine. There is nothing to be said against harpists by any means whatsoever.

I used to think there was something up with any female that liked me, I mean, if she didni get bored with my company, there had to be something up with her. Otherwise how come she wasni with somebody else? If she was normal she would be. Ergo she had to have a personality problem.

And you'd be left there like a fucking dumpling. You'd be standing there. A fucking dumpling man I'm telling ye.

Terrible depressions she got too, her downers could last for days. Ye felt ye had to keep an eye on her. Sammy liked lying with the side of his face on her tits, snuggling in, her nipple poking him in the eye, soft, wrist between her legs, his hand cupping her hole, shielding it from danger, especially when she had come, needing to protect her and all that stuff.

You could see into your own soul with total honesty of vision and find the wherewithal to get it down, that steady hand.

Value-systems are controlled by the occupying force. Those who assimilate receive the reward: they pass.

So far from allowing a person the "right" of self-determination the powers-that-be have proscribed the "right" to self-expression, as is the case in one way or another in almost every country in the world, including Britain.

Unfortunately, the struggle can degenerate from the affirmation of a language and/or culture to the point of tradition at all costs, especially that of the individual, i.e., tradition at the expense of existence, where art becomes simply heritage, from there the path spirals downwards into "blood and soil" politics, the "purity" of the language into the "purity" of the race, and so on.

Creativity is not passive, I don't see the creation of art as passive.