Four experts had an appointment with an ordinary man. They needed him to ratify their findings, or anything they achieved would be meaningless. As th…

- William Mcilvanney

That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn't a place to live. It was necessary to live where the idea and the fact collided.

- William Mcilvanney

Just as the apparent openness of rectitude will have its hidden places where foul things moulder in the dark, so, in the shadowed lives of those outs…

- William Mcilvanney

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.

- William Mcilvanney

Writing is a way of sharing our humanity.

- William Mcilvanney

There is a kind of laughter people laugh at public events, as if a joke were a charity auction and they want to be seen to be bidding.

- William Mcilvanney

Who thinks the law has anything to do with justice? It's what we have because we can't have justice.

- William Mcilvanney