Dumpling James Kelman Quotes

And you'd be left there like a fucking dumpling. You'd be standing there. A fucking dumpling man I'm telling ye. ~ James Kelman

Ye wake in a corner and stay there hoping yer body will disappear, the thoughts smothering ye; these thoughts; but ye want to remember and face up to things, just something keeps ye from doing it, why can't ye no do it; the words filling yer head: then the other words; there's something wrong; there's something far far wrong; ye're no a good man, ye're just no a good man. Edging back into awareness, of where ye are: here, slumped in this corner, with these thoughts filling ye. And oh christ his back was sore; stiff, and the head pounding. He shivered and hunched up his shoulders, shut his eyes, rubbed into the corners with his fingertips; seeing all kinds of spots and lights. Where in the name of fuck ... ~ James Kelman

Waiting rooms. Ye go into this room where ye wait. Hoping's the same. One of these days the cunts'll build entire fucking buildings just for that. Official hoping rooms, where ye just go in and hope for whatever the fuck ye feel like hoping for. ~ James Kelman

I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. ~ Ian Rankin

In prose fiction the freedom to work honestly exists, although you may have to fight for it. In those other areas of literature, I mean drama, there is only silence. That sort of aesthetic integrity does not exist in radio and television, and seldom on film. ~ James Kelman

Funny how ye tell people a story to make a point and ye fail, ye fail, a total disaster. Not only do ye no make yer point it winds up the exact fucking opposite man, the exact fucking opposite. That isnay a misunderstanding it's a total
whatever. ~ James Kelman

Folk take a battering but, they do; they get born and they get brought up and they get fuckt. That's the story; the cot to the fucking funeral pyre. ~ James Kelman

In [James Kelman's story] 'The Third Man, or Else the Fourth,' four men stand around a fire, on a freezing day. They appear to be out of work, and very poor. They talk about politics, about an old man who was recently found dead in a cold tenement building, about prison. One of the men, Arthur, starts describing a dream he had. Like most dreams, it is incomprehensible; it gathers pace, and we are drawn into it, and then it fizzles out. Kelman makes a funny, implicit connection between maintaining the fire (the narrator goes off to get "burnables") and maintaining a story: everything is potentially burnable, everything can be used. ~ James Wood

Obviously as a writer you have to reflect on why your work is provoking such hostility, because all you want to do is write your stories as best you can. You're forced to reflect on, why is my work so upsetting for people? The agenda behind it is clear. They don't want to see these people in literature. These areas of human experience [I write about] should not appear in public; we don't want to know. We know that people are in the street, that they have no money and are maybe begging, but we don't want to see them in literature. They should be swept under the carpet. ~ James Kelman

There existed very long saxophones from years ago. The player sat on their chair like a cellist; that same sort of feeling to it as well - unlike for example the way a harpist would be: the whole act differing in a very fundamental sense. Although harpists are fine. There is nothing to be said against harpists by any means whatsoever. ~ James Kelman

The beauty of prose fiction that I see is simply that in order to create something you need only pay attention to personal exigency. ~ James Kelman

Creativity is not passive, I don't see the creation of art as passive. ~ James Kelman

My culture and my language have the right to exist, and no one has the authority to dismiss that. ~ James Kelman

I used to think there was something up with any female that liked me, I mean, if she didni get bored with my company, there had to be something up with her. Otherwise how come she wasni with somebody else? If she was normal she would be. Ergo she had to have a personality problem. ~ James Kelman

We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle. ~ Maynard James Keenan

Most little girls in England grow up wanting to marry
a prince. Bex grew up wanting to kick James Bond's butt and assume his double-0 ranking. ~ Ally Carter

So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department. ~ James Earl Jones

We did what we are supposed to. We protected home. We have to try to do it again Thursday night. ~ LeBron James

It means we're not done. We never were. ~ Lorelei James

I don't know, I think the crowds are even more responsive now because the audiences are skewing younger. ~ James Young

I came in at half past eleven. Since then I have been sitting in an easy chair like a fool. I could do nothing. I hear nothing but your voice. I am like a fool hearing you call me 'Dear.' I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs. When I am with you I leave aside my contemptuous, suspicious nature. I wish I felt your head on my shoulder. ~ James Joyce

They were outside. It was oddly quiet, with just a muffled roar from behind the closed door, as if the ocean were contained on that side. ~ Eloisa James

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. ~ Christopher Hitchens

You need to eat more." ( ... )
"Then I'd get fat, and you wouldn't like me."
Johnny tweaked her nose in teasing response and shifted her into a more comfortable position with her back against his chest. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and his arms hugged her waist before they were settled to his satisfaction. Rachel, spellbound, cast a sideways glance up and back to find that his eyes on her face were as bright and hot as the clear August sky overhead.
"You still don't get it, do you, teacher? I'd like you any way I could get you, any way at all. Besides, I bet you'd be cute fat. A little round dumpling. ~ Karen Robards

You know, God gave me a gift to do other things besides play the game of basketball. ~ LeBron James

James tells the crowd that the river is just a few yards from where we stand is all we ever need to believe in. One white woman asks how old James is and I tell her he's seven and she tells me that he's so smart for an Indian boy.
James hears this and tells the white woman that she's pretty smart for an old white woman. ~ Sherman Alexie

For Sorel, the fact that Marx's prediction that contemporary society would increasingly divide itself into two, and no more than two, mutually hostile classes was falsified by time, could be offset by the readiness of the proletariat to remain intransigent, opposing its nonproletarian opponents with absolute determination. ~ A. James Gregor

Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so to walk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to choose the pace. ~ Henry James

Jack Aubrey is a tremendous tower of strength and you always want to read about him. ~ Clive James

(Man) fancied that by masquerading in leaves and flowers he helped the bare earth to clothe herself with verdure, and that by playing the death and burial of winter he drove that gloomy season away, and made smooth the path for the footsteps of returning spring. We may smile at his vain endeavours if we please, but it was only by making a long series of experiments, of which some were almost inevitably doomed to failure, that mane learned from experience the futility of some of his attempted methods and the fruitfulness of others. After all, magical ceremonies are nothing but experiments which have failed and which continue to be repeated merely because the operator is unaware of their failure. ~ James George Frazer

Excellence does not require perfection. ~ Henry James

But, Bobbie? Really, really don't die out there." "No one lives forever, sir," Bobbie said, "but as long as it doesn't compromise the mission, I'll try to live through it." "Thanks. ~ James S.A. Corey

I say I just happen to be gay. It's just like everything else - I've been on the board of The Humane Society, and I'm a vegetarian, but these are just some of the things that define me as a person. They don't define me in general. ~ James Costos

One of the major lessons in all of biochemistry, cell biology and molecular medicine is that when proteins operate at the sub cellular level, they behave in a certain way as if they're mechanical machinery. ~ James Rothman

It's a good thing about George R.R. Martin: He's prepared to kill off the main guys. You don't get the feeling that the good guy is going to last forever, like James Bond. ~ Sean Bean

Winners take the action that others won't. ~ James Arthur Ray

Dearest dumpling, one day your imagination is going to get you into trouble," whispered his mother.

He would never do that," Pecorino replied. "We're best friends. ~ Alan Madison

But gratitude can be the very devil sometimes, particularly if you have to be grateful for services you'd rather be without. ~ P.D. James

I got the bill for my surgery. Now I know what those doctors were wearing masks for. ~ James H. Boren

Jesse James is like a Leonard Cohen song, I wanted to do something that was like a pop song. ~ Andrew Dominik

There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures. ~ John James Audubon

If a candidate for office starts talking about thinning the deer population or investing in barriers to reduce the number of deer on the highways, the other side will probably just ignore him, because they're not going to know what to say about it. But there is a chance that the issue will resonate with voters in an unexpected way. ~ Bill James

William James once said: "Progress is a terrible thing." It is more than that: it is also a highly ambiguous notion. For who knowsbut that a little further on the way a bridge may not have collapsed or a crevice split the earth? ~ Johan Huizinga