William McIlvanney Quotes

• Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As they drove to meet him, they knocked down a man on the road. He was dying. If they tried to save him, they might miss their appointment. They decided that their appointment, which concerned all of us, was more important than the life of one man. They drove on to keep their appointment. They did not know that the man they were to meet was the man they had left to die.

  William McIlvanney

  Men, Missing, Important

  10 Copy quote

• 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 idea and the fact collided.

  William McIlvanney

  Nice, Ideas, Facts

  1985 The BigMan, ch.8.

  7 Copy quote

• Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

  William McIlvanney

  Lying, Needs, Good Lies

  9 Copy quote

• Writing is a way of sharing our humanity.

  William McIlvanney

  Writing, Humanity, Way

  7 Copy quote

• Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.

  William McIlvanney

  Funny, Humor, Thinking

  William McIlvanney (2013). “Laidlaw”, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

• Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things moulder in the dark, so, in the shadowed lives of those outside the law may sometimes be found concealed honesty and naive ideals.

  William McIlvanney

  Honesty, Dark, Law

  William McIlvanney (2013). “Strange Loyalties (Laidlaw 3)”, p.157, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

• There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.

  William McIlvanney

  Laughter, People, Laughing

  1985 The BigMan, ch.1.

  5 Copy quote

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