The Papers of Tony Veitch Quotes

“Coulda made something o’ himself. But a luckless man. All his days a luckless man. The kinna man woulda got two complimentary tickets for the Titanic.” The unintentional humour of her remark was like her natural appetite for life reasserting itself. Harkness couldn’t stop smiling. It was as if Glasgow couldn’t shut the wryness of its mouth even at the edge of the grave.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“From his vantage point in Ruchill Park, Laidlaw looked out over the city. He could see so much of it from here and still it baffled him. ‘What is this place?’ he thought.

A small and great city, his mind answered. A city with its face against the wind. That made it grimace. But did it have to be so hard? Sometimes it felt so hard…It was a place so kind it would batter cruelty into the ground. And what circumstances kept giving it was cruelty. No wonder he loved it. It danced among its own debris. When Glasgow gave up, the world could call it a day.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“Gin and catatonic?”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“The kinna man woulda got two complimentary tickets for the Titanic.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“The simplicity of this case offends me. It's so neat, it's like a preconception. One thing you can be sure about any preconception. It's wrong. If there's a God and he tried to preconceive the world, he got it wrong.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“you talked out the side of your mouth, in case your lips got chapped. Maybe that was why the West of Scotland was where people put the head on one another—it was too cold to take your hands out your pockets. But it did have compensations. Laidlaw had a happy image of the first man out after the nuclear holocaust being a Glaswegian. He would straighten up and look around. He would dust himself down with that flicking gesture of the hands and, once he had got the strontium off the good suit, he would look up. The palms would be open. ‘Hey,’ he would say. ‘Gonny gi’es a wee brek here? What was that about? Ye fell oot wi’ us or what? That was a liberty. Just you behave.’ Then he would walk off with that Glaswegian walk, in which the shoulders don’t move separately but the whole torso is carried as one, as stiff as a shield. And he would be muttering to himself, ‘Must be a coupla bottles of something still intact.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“The walls were dun and featureless, the furniture was arranged with all the homeyness of a second-hand sale-room and clothes were littered everywhere. It wasn’t a room so much as a suitcase with doors.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“the things he hated most was élitism. We share in everyone else or forego ourselves. ‘Hullo there, captain.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“Laidlaw was reminded that he didn't want the heaven of the holy or the Utopia of the idealists. He wanted the scuffle of living now every day as well as he could manage without the exclusive air-conditioning of creeds and, after it, just the right to lie down with all those others who had settled for the same. It seemed to him the hardest thing to do.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“Macey watched her buttocks move in her fawn cords as if they were chewing a very sweet caramel.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“See, you always buy with notes. Coins are beneath you. You become a whisky-millionaire.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“He hit McMaster twice, with the left from fear, with the right from courtesy.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“They saw five men with travelling bags making more noise than a revolution and being harmless.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“His face was as welcoming as a turned back.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“She looked like a woman you might jump a few lights to get home to.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“Laidlaw’s mind put on its working clothes.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“The place had the gritty untidiness of belonging to no one, a litter bin for wasted time.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“They looked as if they were trying to threaten their own destination into appearing.”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch

“destination”
― William McIlvanney, The Papers of Tony Veitch