Tartan Quotes

#1. All this "confusion" came to an end twenty years after the Royal Visit, when two Bohemian brothers, claiming to be the illegitimate grandsons of Prince Charlie himself, appeared on the scene with their own tartan pattern book, portentously titled Vestiarum Scoticum. James and Charles Sobieski Stuart, as they called themselves, had selected seventy-five different setts, each linked to a specific clan, from a sixteenth-century manuscript they claimed had once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots's father confessor - although they could never quite produce the manuscript when others asked to see it. #Quote by Arthur Herman

#2. I spend a lot of time in my bed. It's a good comfy one with a tartan bedspread. It's the only place I can read without straining my neck, and I take an afternoon nap, which is my reward for making enough money from my writing now not to have to work. I never get up in the morning before 11.30. #Quote by Martin Millar

#3. He'd given her all the love he could give tonight without taking her maidenhead, undressing her, carrying her to his bed, kissing away her tears, caressing her, bringing her to her peak with his hands again and again, until she lay, weak and utterly spent, in his arms. Then he'd held her through the watches of the night, wishing dawn would never come.
"Tha moran ghradh agam ort, dh'Amaliedh," he whispered. My love lies upon you, Amalie.
He lifted the rosary from around his neck and placed the wooden beads in her palm. Then he took the tartan sash from his French uniform and draped it across the pillow beside her, branding her with Clan MacKinnon's colors. Would she know what that meant? #Quote by Pamela Clare

#4. Sardar Harbans Singh passed away peacefully in a wicker rocking-chair in a Srinigar garden of spring flowers and honeybees with his favourite tartan rug across his knees and his beloved son, Yuvraj the exporter of handicrafts, by his side, and when he stopped breathing the bees stopped buzzing and the air silenced its whispers and Yuvraj understood that the story of the world he had known all his life was coming to an end, and that what followed would follow as it had to, but it would unquestionably be less graceful, less courteous and less civilized than what had gone. #Quote by Salman Rushdie

#5. It's a bit undignified to get into, but it's verra easy to take off"
"How do you get into it?" I asked curiously.
"Well, ye lay it out on the ground, like this" -he knelt, spreading the cloth so that it lined the leaf-strewn hollow- "and then ye pleat it every few inches, lie down on it, and row."
I burst out laughing, and sank to my knees, helping to smooth the thick tartan wool. #Quote by Diana Gabaldon

#6. The last year had been a series of wrong turns, bad choices, abandoned projects. There was the all-girl band in which she had played bass, variously called Throat, Slaughterhouse Six and Bad Biscuit, which had been unable to decide on a name, let alone a musical direction. There was the alternative club night that no-one had gone to, the abandoned first novel, the abandoned second novel, several miserable summer jobs selling cashmere and tartan to tourists. At her very, very lowest ebb she had taken a course in Circus Skills until it transpired that she had none. Trapeze was not the solution.
The much-advertised Second Summer of Love had been one of melancholy and lost momentum. Even her beloved Edinburgh had started to bore and depress her. Living in a her University town felt like staying on at a party that everyone else had left, and so in October she had given up the flat in Rankellior Street and moved back to her parents for a long, fraught, wet winter of recriminations and slammed doors and afternoon TV in a house that now seemed impossibly small. #Quote by David Nicholls

#7. It is time,my darling."
"Oh,Frankie,no-"
"You chose dare," he reminded her.
"I did," she agreed sadly, stepping up. "You're right."
It hadn't been entirely fair of him, starting the game in the middle of Neiman Marcus. The King of Prussia Mall, a zillion acres of retail-and-food-in-a-box, is many people's idea of perfect therapy. Me? If given the choice, I might opt for swimming with sharks instead. But today was about Frankie.
"So," he told her, "I pick out three outfits,head to toe. You put them on."
"Fine." Sadie pulled her jacket closer around her.This one was a muddy pruple, and had a third sleeve stitched tot he back. "But if you pick anything like that"- she pointed to a tiny tartan dress that seemed to be missing its entire back- "I will cry."
"Have faith," he replied with a slightly twisted smile, and dragged her toward women's sportswear. "What our sport is," he said apropos of very little save the sign on the wall, "I have no idea."
Ten minutes later, Sadie was heading into the dressing room with an armful of autumn color and a look like she was on her way off a cliff. #Quote by Melissa Jensen

#8. Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas.

That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water.

This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball. #Quote by John Dunn

#9. Take a tartan. Sprinkle it with confetti. Light it with strobe lights. Now take a chameleon. Put the chameleon on the tartan. Watch it closely. See? #Quote by Terry Pratchett

#10. A little old lady came walking by with two Scottie dogs in little tartan coats. She sat down on the bench by Odette and silently took her hand. Nothing was said between them, but they held hands until Odette ran out of tears. The lady gave her a clean handkerchief, and Odette mumbled something thankful.
Pg 583 #Quote by Daniel O'Malley

#11. Any self respecting Scot knows that a good tartan is the solution to everything: it tells you where you are, where you belong, who your friends and family are. Forget the Vikings: those guys just can"t hold a candle to a delicious battle-weary warrior whose fighting skills and wicked sex appeal have spawned a thousand Scottish heartthrobs. #Quote by Trisha Telep

#12. It's such a measure of your solidarity with Ed, that when you would give lectures, he would be wearing a tartan tie that matched. And I demanded that outfit, I thought it was so punk - her long skirt, she looked like a Scottish queen, so regal. #Quote by Vera Farmiga

#13. You should see Nina's clan tartan," she said, pouring herself more tea. "It's white with orange, green, and royal blue. Horrendous."
"We took to calling any obnoxious pattern Clan MacGarish," I said.
"Or MacHideous," added Laurence.
"MacUgly," I continued.
"MacClash," he countered. #Quote by Molly Ringle

#14. The Duration

Here they are are on the beach where the boy played
for fifteen summers, before he grew too old
for French cricket, shrimping and rock pools.

Here is the place where he built his dam
year after year. See, the stream still comes down
just as it did, and spreads itself on the sand

into a dozen channels. How he enlisted them:
those splendid spades, those sunbonneted girls
furiously shoring up the ramparts.

Here they are on the beach, just as they were
those fifteen summers. She has a rough towel
ready for him. The boy was always last out of the water.

She would rub him down hard, chafe him like a foal
up on its legs for an hour and trembling, all angles.
She would dry carefully between his toes.

Here they are on the beach, the two of them
sitting on the same square of mackintosh,
the same tartan rug. Quality lasts.

There are children in the water, and mothers patrolling
the sea's edge, calling them back
from the danger zone beyond the breakers.

How her heart would stab when he went too far out.
Once she flustered into the water, shouting
until he swam back. He was ashamed of her then.

Wouldn't speak, wouldn't look at her even.
Her skirt was sopped. She had to wring out the hem.
She wonders if Father remembers.

Later, when they've had their sandwiches
she might spea #Quote by Helen Dunmore

#15. Jack amused himself by visualising her head creaking open on hinges concealed by her tartan Alice band, and releasing all the furry folk with which she populated her tales. #Quote by Helen Hodgman

#16. But flirting does not come easily to someone brought up in a remote castle with tartan wallpaper in the bathrooms, bagpipes at dawn and men who wear kilts. #Quote by Rhys Bowen

#17. All eyes flew to the entrance.
A great gray stallion reared up in the doorway, its breath frosting the air with puffs of steam. It was a scene from every fairy-tale romance she'd ever read: the handsome prince bursting into the castle astride a magnificent stallion, ablaze with desire and honor as he'd declared his undying love before all and sundry. Her heart swelled with joy.
Then her brow puckered as she scrutinized her "prince." Well, it was almost like a fairy tale. Except this prince was dressed in nothing but a drenched and muddy tartan with blood on his face and hands and war braids plaited at his temples. Although determination glittered in his gaze, a declaration of undying love didn't appear to be his first priority.
"Jillian!" he roared.
Her knees buckled. His voice brought her violently to life. Everything in the room receded and there was only Grimm, blue eyes blazing, his massive frame filling the doorway. He was majestic, towering, and ruthless. Here was her fierce warrior ready to battle the world to gain her love.
He urged Occam into the crowd, making his way toward the altar.
"Grimm," she whispered. #Quote by Karen Marie Moning

#18. That's richt. When we were campaignin' wi' Marlborough oor lads had mony time to sleep wi' the canon dirlin' aboot them. Ye get us'd to't, as Annalpa says aboot bein' a weedow woman. And if ye hae noticed it, Coont, there's nae people mair adapted for fechtin' under difeeculties than oor ane; that's what maks the Scots the finest sogers in the warld. It's the build o them, Lowlan' or Hielan', the breed o' them; the dour hard character o' their country and their mainner o' leevin'. We gied the English a fleg at the 'Forty-five,' didnae we? That was where the tartan cam' in: man, there's naethin' like us! #Quote by Neil Munro

#19. They don't fit you?" V asked his roommate.
"Not the point. No offense, but these are wicked Village People." Butch held his heavy arms out and turned in a circle, his bare chest catching the light. "I mean, come on."
"They're for fighting, not fashion."
"So are kilts, but you don't see me rocking the tartan."
"And thank God for that. You're too bowlegged to pull that shit off."
Butch assumed a bored expression. "You can bite me. #Quote by J.R. Ward

#20. I bring myself innately to it, yeah. I bring those details as much as I - what I don't obsess over is, there are certain ways I might've pushed it even a little more. For example, [to Warren] your accent. I know Warner Bros. at one point came in. I don't know, until you came to set, I know I wore that long tartan skirt and the ruffled blouse for that. #Quote by Vera Farmiga

#21. Quite a few vampires, especially the elders, regarded those who creep through graveyard shadows in batwing capes and fingerless black gloves as an Edinburgh gentleman might look upon a Yankee with a single Scots grandparent who swathes himself in kilts and tartan sashes, prefaces every remark with quotes from Burns or Scott and affects a fondness for bagpipes and haggis. #Quote by Kim Newman

#22. Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life.

There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there's someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean, of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word 'hunt' I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means 'man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pickup truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding above all with plaid'. #Quote by Stephen Fry

#23. Your brother?" St. Clair points above my bed to the only picture I've hung up. Seany is grinning at the camera and pointing at one of my mother's research turtles,which is lifting its neck and threatening to take away his finger. Mom is doing a study on the lifetime reproductive habits of snapping turtles and visits her brood in the Chattahoochie River several times a month. My brother loves to go with her, while I prefer the safety of our home. Snapping turtles are mean.
"Yep.That's Sean."
"That's a little Irish for a family with tartan bedspreads."
I smile. "It's kind of a sore spot. My mom loved the name,but Granddad-my father's father-practically died when he heard it.He was rooting for Malcolm or Ewan or Dougal instead."
St. Clair laughs. "How old is he?"
"Seven.He's in the second grade."
"That's a big age difference."
"Well,he was either an accident or a last-ditch effort to save a failing marriage.I've never had the nerve to ask which. #Quote by Stephanie Perkins

#24. And then Serafina understood something for which the witches had no word: it was the idea of pilgrimage. She understood why these beings would wait for thousands of years and travel vast distances in order to be close to something important, and how they would feel differently for the rest of time, having been briefly in its presence. That was how these creatures looked now, these beautiful pilgrims of rarefied light, standing around the girl with the dirty-face and the tartan skirt and the boy with the wounded hand who was frowning in his sleep. #Quote by Philip Pullman

#25. Well?" said Professor McGonagall, rounding on him. "Is this true?" "Is what true?" Harry asked, rather more aggressively than he had intended. "Professor?" he added in an attempt to sound more polite. "Is it true that you shouted at Professor Umbridge?" "Yes," said Harry. "You called her a liar?" "Yes." "You told her He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is back?" "Yes." Professor McGonagall sat down behind her desk, frowning at Harry. Then she said, "Have a biscuit, Potter." "Have - what?" "Have a biscuit," she repeated impatiently, indicating a tartan tin of cookies lying on top of one of the piles of papers on her desk. #Quote by J.K. Rowling