“Ah wassa born…
And Lord shakin', even then was dumpt into some icy font,
Like some great stinky unclean!
From slum-chuch to slum-church, ah spilt mah heart to some fat cunt behind a screen…”

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.”

“Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

“Ah hate cunts like that. Cunts like Begbie. Cunts that are intae basebaw-batting every fucker that's different; pakis, poofs, n what huv ye. Fuckin failures in a country ay failures. It's nae good blamin it oan the English fir colonising us. Ah don't hate the English. They're just wankers. We are colonised by wankers. We can't even pick a decent, vibrant, healthy culture to be colonised by. No. We're ruled by effete arseholes. What does that make us? The lowest of the fuckin low, tha's what, the scum of the earth. The most wretched, servile, miserable, pathetic trash that was ever shat intae creation. Ah don't hate the English. They just git oan wi the shite thuv goat. Ah hate the Scots.”

“Ah is the shortest of human cries, Oh the longest. Man is born in an Ah and dies in an Oh, for birth is immediate and death is like an airplane taking off.”

“My heart is torn with the sound of raucous voices,
They shout from the slums, from the streets, from the crowded places,
And tunes from the hurdy-gurdy that coldly rejoices
Shoot arrows into my heart.”

“But in this I stood beholding things general, troublously and mourning, saying thus to our Lord in my meaning, with full great dread: Ah! good Lord, how might all be well, for the great hurt that is come, by sin, to the creature? And here I desired, as far as I durst, to have some more open declaring wherewith I might be eased in this matter.”

“Chandler wrote like a slumming angel and invested the sun-blinded streets of Los Angeles with a romantic presence.”

“He'd probably been born with abs. Some were born with abs, some achieved abs, and some - like Simon - had abs thrust upon them by cruel instructors.”

“Ah, ah, thy beauty! like a beast it bites,
Stings like an adder, like an arrow smites.”