We're all like the slaves in the fields now, putting on the front that says 'everything's fine, boss' while we worry about how to make ends meet.

No tears come, and it would be pointless, like trying to empty a reservoir of grief by drip feed.

Knowing when to shut the fuck up was a great and underrated talent.

'The best punch comes not from the soul but the soles,' eh keeps tellin me, right up through the body, arm, doon tae the hand and ontae the chin.

Eventually the bevvy kicks in and they feel thir sorrows flushin away. Ye never drown the sorrows though, ye jist submerge the cunts till the next day.

It would be too much hassle to tell her that she was in a part of Scotland where sharing dreams was a bit like sharing needles; it seemed a good idea at the time but it only served to fuck you up.

Of course you can take the easy way oot and fill yourself wi smack or bevvy like some ay them roond here. They gave up years ago, the sad losers. Ye lose pride in yerself n you've goat nowt.

The world now had a greater superficial wealth than the one they grew up in. Yet something had been lost. It seemed to them a crueller, harsher place, devoid of values. Worse, it seemed that young people, despite their fundamental decency, now had to buy into a mind-set which made viciousness and treachery come easy.

Lying in the bed gazing at the featureless ceiling, with panic slicing through her in waves, a dazzling fissure opened up in Sandra's mind. Through it, she could almost feel her sanity sliding into an abyss, leaving her a zombiefied shell.

They tell us that Nazis are weird, but thir probably nae weirder or mair perverted thin liberals. It wis jist thit times changed n every cunt flipped ower. It could happen anytime, anywhaire.