"The curse of Scottish literature is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind."

"All the pictures include a plus-factor, which robs the public of her pleasure but which is in every case the principal merit of the work; the completely spiritualized, de-materialized awardness of per…"

"Corruption and illicit financial flows are different. But they really must be twinned. This is because, for practical purposes, it is an eminently more sensible approach to treat most of the sources o…"

"She felt... how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with …"

"I couldn't think or eat nothin' unless it was Hank Williams, and I couldn't wait for his next record to come out. He had to be, really, the greatest."