Dumpling Kelman Quotes

#1. And you'd be left there like a fucking dumpling. You'd be standing there. A fucking dumpling man I'm telling ye. #Quote by James Kelman

#2. Elegy on Toy Piano"

For Kenneth Koch
You don't need a pony
to connect you to the unseeable
or an airplane to connect you to the sky.

Necessary it is to love to live
and there are many manuals
but in all important ways
one is on one's own.

You need not cut off your hand.
No need to eat a bouquet.
Your head becomes a peach pit.
Your tongue a honeycomb.

Necessary it is to live to love,
to charge into the burning tower
then charge back out
and necessary it is to die.
Even for the trees, even for the pony
connecting you to what can't be grasped.

The injured gazelle falls behind the
herd. One last wild enjambment.

Because of the sores in his mouth,
the great poet struggles with a dumpling.
His work has enlarged the world
but the world is about to stop including him.
He is the tower the world runs out of.

When something becomes ash,
there's nothing you can do to turn it back.
About this, even diamonds do not lie. #Quote by Dean Young

#3. Jorge Luis Borges: "I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library." "The #Quote by Suzanne Kelman

#4. You need to eat more." ( ... )
"Then I'd get fat, and you wouldn't like me."
Johnny tweaked her nose in teasing response and shifted her into a more comfortable position with her back against his chest. Her head lolled against his shoulder, and his arms hugged her waist before they were settled to his satisfaction. Rachel, spellbound, cast a sideways glance up and back to find that his eyes on her face were as bright and hot as the clear August sky overhead.
"You still don't get it, do you, teacher? I'd like you any way I could get you, any way at all. Besides, I bet you'd be cute fat. A little round dumpling. #Quote by Karen Robards

#5. No point worrying about a storm until we smell rain #Quote by Suzanne Kelman

#6. Mr. Frimpong is the oldest person from church. That's when I knew why he sings louder than anybody else: it's because he's been waiting the longest for God to answer. He thinks God has forgotten him. I only knew it then. Then I loved him but it was too late to go back. #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#7. I wrote my first novel, McFarlane Boils The Sea, under the influence of Kelman and Proust, which is like drinking a cocktail of Bowmore and Châteauneuf du Pape.
(James Meek in interview with TMO) #Quote by James Meek

#8. An unforgettable tale of love, lust, faith, betrayal, and redemption. A powerful, mesmerizing suspense novel-a tour de force! #Quote by Judith Kelman

#9. 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. #Quote by James Kelman

#10. Vilis still doesn't pass to me but I don't care. Where he comes from (Latvia) they burn black people into tar and make roads out of them. #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#11. My sister and I may have been crafted of the same genetic clay, baked in the same uterine kiln, but we were disparate species, doomed never to love each other except blindly. #Quote by Judith Kelman

#12. The dumpling is indeed of more ancient institution, and of foreign origin; but alas, what were those dumplings? Nothing but a few lentils sodden together, moisten'd and cemented with a little seeth'd fat. #Quote by John Arbuthnot

#13. In prose fiction the freedom to work honestly exists, although you may have to fight for it. In those other areas of literature, I mean drama, there is only silence. That sort of aesthetic integrity does not exist in radio and television, and seldom on film. #Quote by James Kelman

#14. I suppose a child's first obligation is to become a stranger to his parents. #Quote by Judith Kelman

#15. I took the first James Kelman novel, 'The Bus Conductor Hines', home to my dad. I thought, 'My dad will like this; it's written in Scots.' But my dad said: 'I can't read that.' He was reading James Bond and John le Carre. That was part of what attracted me to crime - the idea of getting a wide audience. #Quote by Ian Rankin

#16. That undamaged part of her was so small, it was only good for one night. #Quote by Nic Kelman

#17. 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 ... #Quote by James Kelman

#18. Creativity is not passive, I don't see the creation of art as passive. #Quote by James Kelman

#19. 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. #Quote by James Kelman

#20. I peered at the bowl, which was piled high with shrimp and vegetables, little cubes of what looked like meat or fish. The broth was a beautiful golden color, with little circles of orange oil floating on the surface, near the edge of the bowl. My heart rate slowed, oblivion averted. "More chances at wishes. But also, this looks damn good."
I realized I was still holding the spoon with the dumpling, the steam not wafting out like a volcano anymore. So I closed my eyes and readied myself for another bite.
This time the heat took a step back and allowed everything else to come forward. The savory richness of pork, a bite of ginger and scallions, the broth. Oh, man, the broth. I hadn't ever tasted anything quite like this before. I chewed the dumpling, which was starchy but also managed to melt away, letting its texture dominate. For a moment, I wanted to reach for something beyond the flavor, but failed. Would I recognize the taste of magic, if magic even had a taste? Then I let the flavor itself take over. #Quote by Adi Alsaid

#21. He had long since stopped trying to figure out our daughter, who as an adult had quietly removed his superhero cape and in return offered him a cape of indifference. #Quote by Suzanne Kelman

#22. You still said things like that then, still bothered trying to be clever. #Quote by Nic Kelman

#23. My room is now my headquarters. Nobody's allowed in without the password and I haven't even told anybody what the password is (it's pigeon, after my pigeon. Nobody else can find out if you only think it). #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#24. Both the two of us knew it. We watched the lie go up big and slow between us, then it burst like a spit bubble. They always burst before too long. #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#25. I put my alligator tooth down the rubbish pipe. I heard it fall down to the bottom and disappear. It was an offering for the volcano god. It was a present for God himself. If I gave him my best good luck then he'd save us from all the bad things, the sickness and chooking and dead babies, he'd bring us all back together again. He'd have to or it wouldn't be fair. It was a good swap, nobody could say it wasn't. I knew it would work. Thank you pigeon for showing me the right star. #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#26. Mickey: I told you to stay behind.
Martha: You looked like you needed help. Besides, you're the one who persuaded me to go freelance.
Mickey: Yeah, but - we're being fired at by a Sontoran. A dumpling with a gun. And this is no place for a married woman.
Martha: Well then. You shouldn't have married me.
Above them, The Doctor takes out the Sontoran.
Mickey: If we go in here, and down to the factory floor, and down past that corridor. Then he won't know that we're here. Martha sees the Doctor.
Martha: Mickey. Mickey.
-Doctor Who #Quote by Russell T. Davies

#27. Hell is an idea first born on an undigested apple-dumpling ... #Quote by Herman Melville

#28. The beauty of prose fiction that I see is simply that in order to create something you need only pay attention to personal exigency. #Quote by James Kelman

#29. Finally, we would have been offered either a spring takiawase, meaning "foods boiled or stewed together," or a wanmori (the apex of a tea kaiseki meal) featuring seasonal ingredients, such as a cherry blossom-pink dumpling of shrimp and egg white served in a dashi base accented with udo, a plant with a white stalk and leaves that tastes like asparagus and celery, and a sprig of fresh sansho, the aromatic young leaves from the same plant that bears the seedpods the Japanese grind into the tongue-numbing spice always served with fatty eel. #Quote by Victoria Abbott Riccardi

#30. Theoretical webs, dirty webs, fusty webs, old and shrivelling away into nothingness, a fine dust.Who needs that kind of stuff. Far far better getting out into the open air and doing it, actually doing it, something solid and concrete and unconceptualisable. #Quote by James Kelman

#31. And if they don't like it if you use those words and they stop moving put their hand on your mouth say "Don't say thatdon't use that wordI don't like it " if they say they don't want to try being handcuffed to the towel rack in the bathroom they're never any good in bed. They may be nice. They may be witty charming etc. etc. They may be doing something for women's liberation (over what? over whom?). But they're never any good in bed. #Quote by Nic Kelman

#32. Cooking gives you the opportunity to meet the things you eat. You can touch each carrot or olive and get to know its smell and texture.You can feel its weight and notice its color and form. If it is going to become part of you, it seems worthy, at least, of acknowledgment, respect, and thanks. It takes much time and care in order for things to grow, and many labors are needed to bring these ingredients to the kitchen. There is a lot to be grateful for that takes place between the wheat field and the dumpling. #Quote by Gary Thorp

#33. I soon forgot about my bedraggled appearance. Until, that is, an old man shuffled in and propped himself, hunched and wheezing, over the check-in desk. Karen asked him if he needed assistance.
"No," he grunted sucking on his teeth, "your wet-T-shirt librarian with the punk rock hair is helping me out just fine. #Quote by Suzanne Kelman

#34. In [James Kelman's story] 'The Third Man, or Else the Fourth,' four men stand around a fire, on a freezing day. They appear to be out of work, and very poor. They talk about politics, about an old man who was recently found dead in a cold tenement building, about prison. One of the men, Arthur, starts describing a dream he had. Like most dreams, it is incomprehensible; it gathers pace, and we are drawn into it, and then it fizzles out. Kelman makes a funny, implicit connection between maintaining the fire (the narrator goes off to get "burnables") and maintaining a story: everything is potentially burnable, everything can be used. #Quote by James Wood

#35. If a sweet dumpling took human form, it would look just like Aunt Tildy, right down to the flour-dusting of her gray hair. #Quote by Rae Carson

#36. She gives you a ring or a bracelet that says "Peace," or, "Dream more." And you wear it. You wear it even though your friends see it and say, "What the hell is that?" and, embarrassed, because you know exactly how ridiculous it is, you say, "She gave it to me," and then they say, "Oh," and leave it at that because now it makes sense. Yes, you wear it all the time. But you know it will not work. That is what she is for. #Quote by Nic Kelman

#37. A name is so Jesus will find you. Otherwise Jesus won't know who he's looking for and you'd just float in space forever. That would be hutious. What if you fell into the sun, you'd get burned up like human toast! #Quote by Stephen Kelman

#38. I'm a postmodern commentator, and so, in a cheeky parallel to James Joyce or James Kelman, I get to places, verbally, that are a little unusual - when I talk about Jocky Wilson and end up sounding like a Jackson Pollock of the commentary box. #Quote by Sid Waddell

#39. Luck is like having a rice dumpling fly into your mouth." - If a rice dumpling magically flew into my mouth, I'd totally freak out and probably spit it out. #Quote by Tom Tiding

#40. If you want to marry me, here's what you'll have to do:
You must learn how to make a perfect chicken-dumpling stew.
And you must sew my holey socks,
And soothe my troubled mind,
And develop the knack for scratching my back,
And keep my shoes spotlessly shined.
And while I rest you must rake up the leaves,
And when it is hailing and snowing
You must shovel the walk ... and be still when I talk,
And-hey-where are you going? #Quote by Shel Silverstein

#41. The wildest friend, the one you once saw walk up to a boy of about five or six who'd been left alone for a minute and say, "Did you know your mom's fucking hot?" that one, that friend. He's always the one who falls the hardest. He's always the one who disappears the most completely when he finds a woman that will put up with him. #Quote by Nic Kelman