Top 160 Douglas Stuart Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “She had loved him, and he had needed to break her completely to leave her for good. Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”

— Douglas Stuart

2. “Rain was a natural state of Glasgow. It kept the grass green and the people pale and bronchial.”

— Douglas Stuart

3. “Flames are not just the end, they are also the beginning. For everything that you have destroyed can be rebuilt. From your own ashes you can grow again.”

— Douglas Stuart

4. “Don’t let it bother you. They see the one thing that’s a bit more special than them and then they just pile on.”

— Douglas Stuart

5. “The sun was not yet fully overhead in the sky, and everything beautiful was all already ruined.”

— Douglas Stuart

6. “But how come Morrissey didnae think there was panic on the streets of Glasgow? There’s plenty of fuckin’ panic here.”

— Douglas Stuart

7. “There were rows of teeth marks on the windowsill, perfect little half-moons of anxiety.”

— Douglas Stuart

8. “Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness, he simply couldn’t help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced too much, so that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one had seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one had tended. It should have withered years ago, like hers had, like Hamish’s had, yet Mungo had all this love to give and it lay about him like ripened fruit and nobody bothered to gather it up.”

— Douglas Stuart

9. “Dance for me, Hugh,” said Agnes, out of the blue. “Eh?” answered Shuggie, rolling over on the carpet. Leek groaned, he didn’t like it when she made a pet of his brother. What good was a soft boy in a hard world? He left them to their nonsense. They listened to him slam his bedroom door and knew he would be hunched over, his heavy headphones on, drawing again in the black book. “Go on, dance for me. I want you to show me how the kids today dance.”

— Douglas Stuart

10. “Howse aboots some light entertainment?”

— Douglas Stuart

11. “Mungo looked both up and down the hill, and then he kissed James quickly on the lips. It was like hot buttered toast when you were starving. It was that good.”

— Douglas Stuart

12. “If I were you, I would keep dancing.” “I can’t.” The tears were coming. “You know they only win if you let them.” “I can’t.” His arms and fingers were still outstretched and frozen, like a dead tree. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.” “Mammy, help. I can’t.” “Yes. You. Can.” She was still smiling through her open teeth. “Just hold your head up high and Gie. It. Laldy.”

— Douglas Stuart

13. “Don’t cross your legs when you walk. Try and make room for your cock.” Leek grabbed at the bulge in the front of his corduroy and strode back and forth in a half strut, half lazy amble. “Don’t bend your knees so much. Take longer, straighter steps.”

— Douglas Stuart

14. “Shug had seen it before, those with least to give always gave the most.”

— Douglas Stuart

15. “The man’s mouth was a collection of broken teeth. He had a grin like a graveyard full of wrecked headstones.”

— Douglas Stuart

16. “Cheer up. I love you, Mungo Hamilton.”

— Douglas Stuart

17. “Mungo’s capacity for love frustrated her. His loving wasn’t selflessness; he simply could not help it. Mo-Maw needed so little and he produced so much. So that it all seemed a horrible waste. It was a harvest no one seeded, and it blossomed from a vine no one tended.”

— Douglas Stuart

18. “George said. “I am on fire. I do not burn. It’s Saint Agnes’s lament.”

— Douglas Stuart

19. “As they looked at one another, Shuggie wondered whether he was lost or searching too.”

— Douglas Stuart

20. “Like the stubborn oose you pick from an acrylic jumper, some unseen static kept pulling his gaze back to the boy. James turned away. He knew if they caught him staring they would have a hundred names for him before he had a name for himself.”

— Douglas Stuart

21. “Don’t make the same mistake as me. She’s never going to get better. When the time is right you have to leave. The only thing you can save is yourself.”

— Douglas Stuart

22. “To be thirty-nine and have her husband and her three children, two of them nearly grown, all crammed together in her mammy’s flat, gave her a feeling of failure.”

— Douglas Stuart

23. “Listen son, at ma age love is a nuisance of a thing. What ye want is some easy company on a Tuesday night, a bit of help runnin’ the hoose, and if yer lucky a bit of nookie as long as ye can both lie on yer side while ye’re at it.” Mungo didn’t laugh at the joke. Jocky dropped his dout into his mug. “What ye want is an easy life. There’s nothin’ easy about love.”

— Douglas Stuart

24. “Separately, the two women had spent whole afternoons hiding behind settees from the Provident man. It was like an odd synchronized swimming, the way the Pithead women all sank to the carpet and crawled across the floor. The Provvie was a thin man in a big suit.”

— Douglas Stuart

25. “Agnes sucked at her porcelain. Now here they were, every Friday night, these same women playing cards in her mammy’s front room. There was not a single drop of make-up between them. Nobody had much of a heart to sing any more.”

— Douglas Stuart

26. “Shuggie fixated on the comb gliding through the hair. He watched how each strand separated like burn water. “I think she is going to drink herself to death.” “Would you be sad?” asked the girl. He stopped combing her hair. “I would be gutted. Wouldn’t you?” She shrugged. “I dunno. I think it’s what all alkies want anyways.” She shivered. “To die, I mean. Some are just taking the slow road to it.”

— Douglas Stuart

27. “As I reached out for help, everyone shrank back from me; they pulled away from fear that the fire would return.”

— Douglas Stuart

28. “Mungo and his brother and sister called this slack version of her Tattie-bogle, like some heartless, shambling scarecrow.”

— Douglas Stuart

29. “The torchlight shone up her skirt, trying to illuminate her gusset. They were taunting her, their voices pitched, ready to break, the dangerous sound of little boys coming into the intoxicating power of manhood.”

— Douglas Stuart

30. “Twenty. Five. Years. Out at the Dalmarnock Iron Works, and all he got was three weeks’ wages. Three weeks! I went up there maself, chapped on the big red gaffer’s door, and I telt him what he could dae with three weeks’ wages.”

— Douglas Stuart

31. “Agnes pulled the boy into her side, and he clung to her like a limpet.”

— Douglas Stuart

32. “The damp wind kissed her flushed neck and pushed down inside her dress. It felt like a stranger’s hand, a sign of living, a reminder of life.”

— Douglas Stuart

33. “Are you going to stick in at the school?” “I’ll try.” “Well, try harder. Don’t make the same mistake as me, Shuggie. Make something of yourself.”

— Douglas Stuart

34. “What kind of man are you going to be when you grow up?” “What do you want me to be?” Agnes thought for a moment. “Peaceful.” She pushed at his wet hair again. “Less worried-looking.”

— Douglas Stuart

35. “No day ever started well with six dozen raw chickens, and today of all days, it was stealing the sweetness out of his daydreams.”

— Douglas Stuart

36. “It was clear now: nobody would get to be made brand new.”

— Douglas Stuart

37. “Agnes Bain was too rare a thing to let someone else love. It wouldn’t do to leave pieces of her for another man to collect and repair later.”

— Douglas Stuart

38. “Mungo watched the man closely; he tried to smile in all the right places. It was the fourth different face Gallowgate had shown him, and he wanted to keep all of them straight. There had been the sullen man on the bus, the letch with the dirty stories at the campfire, the wounded fisherman by the loch, and now this person, his excited best friend, his false big brother.”

— Douglas Stuart

39. “Big Shug Bain had seemed so shiny in comparison to the Catholic. He had been vain in the way only Protestants were allowed to be, conspicuous with his shallow wealth, flushed pink with gluttony and waste.”

— Douglas Stuart

40. “From his real father he had inherited a gentle personality, quiet and pensive, lonesome and faraway.”

— Douglas Stuart

41. “The rubber tip had worn away from around the right heel, and although she had coloured the shoe in with an old black bingo marker, the sharp metal nail scraped the floor with the screech of hard times.”

— Douglas Stuart

42. “They were silent a good long time after that. It grew so late it became early.”

— Douglas Stuart

43. “Sadness made for a better houseguest; at least it was quiet, reliable, consistent.”

— Douglas Stuart

44. “He’d stopped counting a while ago. To have marked her sobriety in days was like watching a happy weekend bleed by: when you watched it, it was always too short. So he just stopped counting.”

— Douglas Stuart

45. “Red-haired, stocky, and flat-faced, his head joined directly to his body as if a neck were an unnecessary luxury.”

— Douglas Stuart

46. “Her brother had been gifted with legendary stubbornness; he just stared through you and floated away, leaving behind his frame to be pecked to pieces.”

— Douglas Stuart

47. “Shuggie watched her and said under his breath, “Why can’t I be enough?” But she wasn’t listening.”

— Douglas Stuart

48. “He rested his ear against the door and prayed for Eugene to stay, prayed that his mother would find strength to stay off the drink and be at peace. Then he prayed for God to make him normal for his birthday.”

— Douglas Stuart

49. “That was the problem with the young ones; they saw no reason to not expect better for themselves. She’d definitely have to go.”

— Douglas Stuart

50. “It was a fresh start, she had thought, and hopefully a better class of alcoholic.”

— Douglas Stuart