Top 7 Quotes by William McIlvanney

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

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

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.

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

William McIlvanney

Lying, Needs, Good Lies

Writing is a way of sharing our humanity.

William McIlvanney

Writing, Humanity, Way

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

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