“Some books are lies frae end to end.”

God knows, I’m not the thing I should be, Nor am I even the thing I could be, But twenty times I rather would be An atheist clean, Than under gospel colours hid be Just for a screen.

When matters are desperate we must put on a desperate face.

Learn taciturnity and let that be your motto!

I want someone to laugh with me, someone to be grave with me, someone to please me and help my discrimination with his or her own remark, and at times, no doubt, to admire my acuteness and penetration.

Your lines, I maintain it, are poetry, and good poetry. Friendship had I been so blest as to have met with you in time, might have led me – God of love only knows where.

The wisest man the warl’ e’er saw, He dearly loved the lasses, O.

Be Briton still to Britain true, Among oursel’s united; For never but by British hands Maun British wrangs be righted.

I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.

O Scotia! my dear, my native soil! For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent

O, wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as others see us! It wad frae monie a blunder free us, An’ foolish notion.

The best laid plans take 40 years to complete.

I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.

The heart that is generous and kind most resembles God.

O Life! thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, To wretches such as I!

Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn!

Ye Hypocrites, are these your pranks To murder men and gie God thanks Desist for shame, proceed no further God won’t accept your thanks for murder.

I had found my religion: nothing seemed more important to me than a book. I saw the library as a temple.

I really like to look like a history book. I can look the 1940s, I can look 1970s hippie-chic, or sometimes I’ll pull that ’80s Brooklyn hip-hop kid with the door-knocker earrings.

So many books, so little time.

I found the human heart empty and insipid everywhere except in books.

Tell me how you read and I’ll tell you who you are.

Everything that I do is very autobiographical. I’m trying to be as much of an open book as possible and give the audience every single piece of me.

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible, and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.

Books: our unfailing companions.