"Finally, all is wrapped in an immensity of silence which even the far, faint echoes of persons singing in the void of the plain cannot shatter."
- Dead Souls, Nikolai Gogol ... See MoreSee Less

“And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet I would remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Farthest Shore ... See MoreSee Less

"No situation could be more commanding for the head city of a kingdom; none better chosen for noble prospects."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes ... See MoreSee Less

"And then, when, after a day spent in meditation, he returned in the evening through the boulevards, and caught a glimpse through the branches of the trees of the fathomless space beyond, the nameless gleams, the abyss, the shadow, the mystery, all that which is only human seemed very pretty indeed to him."
- Les Misérables, Victor Hugo ... See MoreSee Less

"In a word, life is so unsightly that there are times when the heart turns sick in a man’s inside; and the look of a tavern, or the thought of the warm, fire-lit study, is like the touch of land to one who has been long struggling with the seas."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes ... See MoreSee Less

"A Scot of poetic temperament, and without religious exaltation, drops as if by nature into the public-house. The picture may not be pleasing; but what else is a man to do in this dog’s weather?"
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes ... See MoreSee Less

“Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.”
― G.K. Chesterton ... See MoreSee Less

"Setting aside the tombs of Roubiliac, which belong to the heroic order of graveyard art, we Scotch stand, to my fancy, highest among nations in the matter of grimly illustrating death."
- Robert Louis Stevenson, Edinburgh Picturesque Notes ... See MoreSee Less

"The party's over
It's time to call it a day
They've burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It's time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up the piper must be paid"
- The Party's Over, Nat King Cole ... See MoreSee Less

“Disco sucks? You never heard that from me.”
― John Lydon, Anger is an Energy: My Life Uncensored ... See MoreSee Less

“We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.”
― Voltaire ... See MoreSee Less

"No, no, the number that matters, and I will spare you the quiz, is two. Two is the number that matters. Two, as I’m sure you realise, is the number of love.”
- from Science Fiction, by me
( available from Obverse Books ) ... See MoreSee Less

"If I looked up, I saw scenes which were familiar to me in my happier time and which I had contemplated but the day before in the company of her who was now but a shadow and a recollection."
- Frankenstein, Mary Shelley ... See MoreSee Less

“When things go well for days on end, it is an hilarious accident.”
― Kurt Vonnegut ... See MoreSee Less

"The nooks of ruin where the old monks had once had their refectories and gardens, and where the strong walls were now pressed into the service of humble sheds and stables, were almost as silent as the old monks in their graves."
- Great Expectations, Charles Dickens ... See MoreSee Less