James Kelman > Quotes

“Ninety-nine per cent of traditional English literature concerns people who never have to worry about money at all. We always seem to be watching or reading about emotional crises among folk who live in a world of great fortune both in matters of luck and money; stories and fantasies about rock stars and film stars, sporting millionaires and models; jet-setting members of the aristocracy and international financiers.”
― 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, How Late It Was, How Late

“But lassies are trained for it, in a manner of speaking; it's part of the growing-up process for them, young females. It doesn't happen with boys, just if you're a lassie, you've got to learn how not to talk; plus how not to look, you get trained how not to look. How not to look and how not to talk. You get trained how not to do things.”
― 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, How Late It Was, How Late

“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, How Late It Was, How Late

“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, How Late It Was, How Late

“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, A Disaffection

“...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

“But what can ye do, ye’ve got to batter on, know what I’m saying, ye’ve got to batter on.”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late

“Terrible depressions she got too, her downers could last for days. Ye felt ye had to keep an eye on her. Sammy liked lying with the side of his face on her tits, snuggling in, her nipple poking him in the eye, soft, wrist between her legs, his hand cupping her hole, shielding it from danger, especially when she had come, needing to protect her and all that stuff.”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late

“These wee victories; ye've got to celebrate them. Otherwise ye forget ye've won them.”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late

“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. One on every corner. Course they had them already – boozers. Ye go in to hope and they sell ye a drink to help pass the time. Ye see these cunts sitting there. What’re they there for? They’re hoping. They’re hoping for something. The telly’s rotten. So they go out hoping for something better. I’m just away out for a pint, hen, be back in an hour. You hoping the football’ll come on soon? Aye. I hope ye’ll no be too long. I’ll no be; no unless I meet some cunt – I hope I don’t!”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late

“I'm cracking up in my auld age.”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late: A Novel

“Nay point in hoping for the best.”
― James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late

“Unfortunately, the struggle can degenerate from the affirmation of a language and/or culture to the point of tradition at all costs, especially that of the individual, i.e., tradition at the expense of existence, where art becomes simply heritage, from there the path spirals downwards into “blood and soil” politics, the “purity” of the language into the “purity” of the race, and so on.”
― James Kelman, Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter

“You could see into your own soul with total honesty of vision and find the wherewithal to get it down, that steady hand.”
― James Kelman, A Disaffection

“name, maybe”
― James Kelman, You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free

“So far from allowing a person the “right” of self-determination the powers-that-be have proscribed the “right” to self-expression, as is the case in one way or another in almost every country in the world, including Britain.”
― James Kelman, Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter

“When my colleagues spoke to me they uttered excrement ingested from television. Some fascist celebrity off a reality programme spouting the worst sorts of rightwing nonsense in that general spirit of smug ignorance that infuses the British Broadcasting Corporation. They listened to them and their lickspittles, washed-up entrepreneurs, DJs and rockstars, retired football players. They took their information from such sources. They knew nothing of politics and didnay want to know. At least not from me or anyone like me. They listened to nonsense and regurgitated the regurgitations, like licking up somebody's bile, spitting it into a cup and trying to use it to construct a picture.”
― James Kelman, That Was a Shiver, and Other Stories

“How do you recognise a Glaswegian in English literature? He's the cut-out figure who wields a razor-blade, gets moroculous drunk and never has a single, solitary 'thought' in his entire life. He beats his wife and beats his kids and beats his next door neighbour. And another striking thing; everybody from a Glaswegian or working-class background, everybody in fact from any regional part of Britain -none of them knew how to talk! Unlike the nice, stalwart upper-class English hero whose words on the page were always absolutely splendidly proper and pure and pristinely accurate whether in dialogue or without. Most interesting of all, for myself as a writer, the narrative belonged to them and them alone. They owned it. The place where thought and spiritual life exists.”
― James Kelman, Some Recent Attacks: Essays Cultural & Political

“Value-systems are controlled by the occupying force. Those who assimilate receive the reward: they pass.”
― James Kelman, Between Thought and Expression Lies a Lifetime: Why Ideas Matter

“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