Glasgow Quotes

I’m fascinated by fire. When I was four, I wore an American fireman’s hat all the time, and I still have one in my office today. Glasgow used to be called ‘Tinderbox City;’ there were always fires, people getting killed.

It was great being brought up in a Glasgow working-class tenement. It wasn’t miserable, and it wasn’t poverty stricken. It felt very safe, full of delights.

I’d live in Glasgow if I could. I can’t praise it enough; it’s the nicest place I have ever worked and I’ve worked in a lot of nice places.

Every time you come to Glasgow, it is going to be tough because the crowd don’t like me. When they are swearing at you and booing, it’s hard.

I have been gigging around Glasgow and Edinburgh since I was 12. I played in pubs at that age, even though I obviously was too young to be in them. So I used to hide in bathrooms, come out and play my set, then get the hell out as quickly as possible.

I was born in Glasgow. But my family is pretty much from a little town called Paisley, famous for its cotton mills and paisley pattern.

Glasgow is one of my favourite cities.

I went to the Glasgow Youth Theatre and they just let me in. But I was so shy that I was there for about six weeks without actually introducing myself.

Glasgow’s not a media center. When you’re there, when you’re hanging about, you feel quite detached from musical movements or fashions or anything like that. You do feel quite alone, in a good way.

Pretty much everybody we know in Glasgow who‘s in a band has another job. All of us have worked in bars, cafes, or cinemas. It means you can afford to do the thing you love.

Because I came from a small town outside Glasgow, nobody from my school had ever gone into the acting profession. It was just something you didn’t do. You joined the bank or became a teacher or whatever you did.

Glasgow is certainly a place where they will tell you if they don’t think you are anything special.

I think there’s a lot of honesty in that track. ‘Smalltown Boy‘ was about leaving Glasgow but it was also about the people I had come to meet on my journey, especially when I was squatting in London.

The photograph of the Queen sitting stiffly across the table from Glasgow resident Susan McCarron is so natural and expressive that it looks utterly fake. It looks like an artist‘s portrait, complete with symbolism, humour and poignancy. No wonder the palace and the press have interpreted it in such different ways.

It’s quite telling that the really big comedians – like John Bishop from Liverpool, Kevin Bridges from Glasgow, Peter Kay from Bolton – stand out with their strong regional accents.

It’s very important for cities all around the world to reinvent themselves, and Glasgow is a good example of that. The Scots are very nice. I don’t think they are burdened by their history.

I was happy living in a high-rise council estate in Glasgow up until our sixth album.

I was spotted in Glasgow and asked to enter a competition to find the Highland Spring Face of 1995 by the Storm agency. I won the Edinburgh heat, then I won the title in London and moved there aged 16.

Most big cities like London and Glasgow have great big rivers that are unmissable. What’s brilliant about the Water of Leith is that it’s so hidden. It’s a secret.

My family moved to Saudi Arabia from Glasgow when I was 15. Being a 15-year-old girl anywhere is difficult – all those hormones and everything – but being a 15-year-old girl in Saudi Arabia… it was like someone had turned the light off in my head. I could not get a grasp on why women were treated like this.

Glasgow’s really friendly, with this impressive mix of real solidarity and identity that’s very personal.

Glasgow is a great city.

I’m really looking forward to filming in Glasgow with a top-class cast and crew.

The great thing about Glasgow is that if there’s a nuclear attack it’ll look exactly the same afterwards.

I do actually have a connection with James Herriot because we went to school in the same area. I went to Hillhead Primary School in the West End of Glasgow and he went to Hillhead Secondary.

I don’t really make films in Denmark. ‘Bronson’ was shot in Rottingham, ‘Valhalla Rising‘ was made in Glasgow, and ‘Drive‘ was made in Hollywood.

There’s so much light in Broughty Ferry. I think the humour in Glasgow is darker, because it’s much more gloomy, there’s a perpetual misery there.

If the UFC wants me to fight in Glasgow, I will do this in Glasgow. If they want me to fight in Africa, I will fight in Africa, you know what I mean?

For me, the reputation for teaching language in general, and East European languages most particularly, gave Glasgow University, and by reflection the country, a distinction.

STG and the Ramshorn Theatre are a vital part of Glasgow’s rich cultural history. To abandon them now is to abandon not only our past, but our future.

I couldn’t afford to go to drama school in London. Then I met with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and I fell in love with the city. It was one of the few schools that offered me a place. It didn’t do me any harm.

I was born at Rotten Row in Glasgow and brought up in Loch Lomond near a small place called Gartocharn. And it’s a bit like anyone: where you’re brought up, you have an irresistible attraction to that place; it defines who you are.

If I didn’t live in London, I would live in Glasgow. I love the colour of the brick and the black ironwork. I think it’s got such atmosphere and is extraordinary. I met great people there.

Scotland – and Glasgow – is a tough place to play football and a lot of big names have come up here and not produced.

People in Glasgow are really rowdy which is good.

Whenever I’m in Glasgow I go and stand outside the front of the house I grew up in, which is in Mount Vernon.

People always say that Glasgow has had umpteen social problems but keeps finding ways of getting over its difficulties and transforming itself. Maybe, belonging to the city I’m able to renew myself too, and keep extending out into some new area.

When I was a child growing up in Glasgow my parents did Christmas incredibly well. They were as excited about it as we were.

My granny would come out and stay with us in the winter, and we would listen to the reports from the coastal stations and have a discussion in the middle of Glasgow about what the weather was like in Tiree.

Back in the Seventies, we bucked the trend. Instead of going to London and handing in a demo tape, we insisted the record labels came to Glasgow to hear us.

I didn’t know until later, but my uncle was quite a famous bohemian in Glasgow, and he played guitar. My father was a kind of a poetic bohemian, and he read me poetry.