“Perhaps it was just that, born in Scotland, you were hanselled with remorse, set up with shares in Calvin against your coming of age, so that much of the energy you expended came back guilt.” — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice. — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
“Perhaps it was just that, born in Scotland, you were hanselled with remorse, set up with shares in Calvin against your coming of age,… — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
“Somewhere in all the bright assurances he was lost in a private darkness, led on by a recurrent dream of more than he was. What means did he have to fulfil it? A family, a house, a patch of garden. Suburban man's estate. With that he had somehow to contain and satisfy a hunger that seemed grotesquely out of keeping… — William McIlvanney Copy Share
That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn't a place to live. It was necessary to live where the… — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things moulder in the dark, so, in the shadowed lives… — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As… — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be… — William McIlvanney Copy Share Image
