Hello to the world! My name is Clare. Am from Scotland I love reading and writing and travel - been round most of Europe and love meeting new people to exchange views and make authentic connections.

Long letters in the teenage penfriend mode rather than 'chat'?

Happy to write in English.

Reading and writing, music and travel

The Doors, The Beatles, The Smiths, The Pet Shop Boys, The Rolling Stones , The Velvet Underground, Motown, Northern Soul, Big Star, Scott Walker. REM.  Nancy Sinatra, Television

Dangerous Liaisons, The Promised Land, Three Colours White, A Hidden Life, Casablanca, Man of Iron, Man of Marble, The Seventh Seal, Danton,  Bridge of Spies, Network, Annie Hall,  Of  Gods and Men, The Third Man,, The Sacrifice, Baader Meinhof Complex, Belle de Jour Love and Mercy, Salvador, Before The Revolution

The Newsreader, Deutschland 89, State of Happiness, The Killing, Borgen, The Valhalla Murders, Brideshead Revisited, The Fortunes of War, Vienna Blood, Tutti Frutti.

The Night of the Gun- James Carr, Closing Time - Joe Queenan, The Secret History - Donna Tartt, Confederacy of Dunces- John Kennedy Toole, Midnight in The Garden of Good and Evil- John Berendt, Friends and Enemies Barbara Amiel,  The Berlin Exchange by Josephy Kanon, Where You Once Belonged by Kent Harfur, Metamorphosis Franz Kafka, The Captive Mind Czesław_Miłosz, The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov, Portrait of The Artist As A Young Man, James Joyce, Hotel Savoy Joseph Roth Hiroshima  John Hersey Hollywood Animal Joe Eszterhas

There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.
Albert Camus


Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything."
Saul Bellow

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
Wendell Berry

Nothing can beat the thrill of battle. I loved it.
Peter McAleese

Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it
Voltaire


"When the curtain rises, the only thing that speaks is courage."
Maria Callas
I will write to avenge my people
Annie Ernaux

Stand Fast
Motto of the Grant clan

What has no shadow has no strength to live.
Czeslaw Milosz

As long as there are games to play it's not over.
Alex Ferguson

Individuality will always be one of the conditions of real elegance
Christian Dior

"If I were to die tomorrow it wouldn't be a problem for me. To live 100 years as a coward is meaningless. Instead I have lived as as man.''
Nicola Gratteri

And death shall have no dominion.
Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot;
Though they go mad they shall be sane,
Though they sink through the sea they shall rise again;
Though lovers be lost love shall not;
And death shall have no dominion.
Dylan Thomas

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark
Isaac Bashevis Singer
Trust your wildest dreams
Dave Stewart

I want to live my life in a way that when I  get really old I look back at my life and say 'Aah I lived it, not survived it.'
Kate Moss
That is what i am most proud of. I gave women permission to be different. That is why it worked. I was just being me..
Suzi Quatro

God grant me the serenity/to just remember who I am
Joe South
In January 1985 we were signing on the dole. In March 1985 were were playing a gig in New York City. There was no time to get your senses together. And it was all fun and games until they started throwing bottles at us.''
Jim Reid.

“As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will
Arthur Rimbaud

The person you are is a thousand times more interesting than the best actor you could ever hope to be.
Constantin Stanislavski

People would rather read about the wild man of rock but music isn't always crazy and wild, it's satisfying, gorgeous and luscious and a whole velvetness that makes you feel coddled.
Billy Idol

Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.
George Orwell


We did ask for alcohol and got a no. There is always something missing in paradise
Aiden Aslin

If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.
Tennessee Williams

There's no substitute for what you really want.
Rudolf Valentino

You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself.
Truman Capote
Order is needed by the ignorant but it takes a genius to master chaos.
Albert Einstein


For beauty is nothing but the beginnings of a terror we are only just able to bear. And it lures us so because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Rainer Maria Rilke

A crown is merely a hat that lets the rain in
Frederick the Great

A throne is only a bench covered with velvet
Napoleon

We are all born to die. The difference is the intensity with which we choose to live.''
Gina Lollobrigida

I believe it is our own misperceptions of who we really are that leads to every self-created hell you'll find in this world.
Bill Hicks

What I have written I have written
Pontius Pilate


"Don't dress to kill, dress to survive."
Karl Lagerfeld

I used to fly around quite a bit, you know? I took a lot of unnecessary chances on the highways. And I started racing, and now I drive on the highways, I'm extra cautious because no one knows what they're doing half the time. You don't know what this guy is going to do or that one.
James Dean

What can't be said can be written. Because writing is a silent act, a labor from the head to the hand.
Herta Muller

Be the flame not the moth
Casanova

Shut your eyes and see
James Joyce

If you are heartbroken , make yourself up , dress up , add more lipstick and attack
Coco Chanel

In order to conquer, what we need is to dare, still to dare, and always to dare.”.
Georges Danton

Women have been burnt as witches simply because they were beautiful.
Simone de Beauvoir

The first rule is don't burn your wings.
Yves St Laurent

Nobody is ‘keeping rock’n’roll alive’. It’s just impossible to kill.
Damiano David

If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
Joan Crawford

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.
Jean-Paul Sartre

One day I will find the right words and they will all be simple
Jack Kerouac


Chaos is the score upon which reality is written
Henry Miller

If everything on earth were rational, nothing would happen.
Fyodor Dostoevsky

Everything can be conveyed in a look and yet that look can always be denied because it cannot be quoted word for word.
Stendhal

To live and dream is a wicked dance. My dreams often came true. A curse. And a blessing.
Pamela Anderson

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
St. Francis Of Assisi,



A Ship in Harbor Is Safe, but That Is Not What Ships Are Built For
John A Shedd

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin.

“Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes. You must look into that storm and shout as you did in Rome. Do your worst, for I will do mine! Then the fates will know you as we know you”
Alexandre Dumas



Although human life is priceless, we always act as though something had an even greater price than life.... but what is that something?
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

It's only rock and roll but I like it
Jagger/Richards

Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature 
Camille Paglia

"It's A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll)
Angus Young, Malcolm Young, Bon Scott.

Cast a cold eye On life, on death. Horseman, pass by!
William Butler Yeats
When blue wear red
Pauline Trigère

You can destroy your now by worrying about tomorrow
Janis Joplin


Sophistication is a place you crawl to
Nancy Sinatra

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh -
Leonard Cohen

I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.”
Oscar Wilde

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.
Patti Smith

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better
Samuel Beckett

A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.
Franz Kafka

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees
Dolores Ibårruri,

“I think perfection is ugly. Somewhere in the things humans make, I want to see scars, failure, disorder, distortion.”
― Yohji Yamamoto

More than kisses letters mingle souls
John Donne

“Hypocrisy is a tribute that vice pays to virtue.”
Francois Duc De La Rochefoucauld,

I am not solitary when I read and write, though nobody is with me.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The pen is mightier than the sword
Edward Bulwer-Lytton

"Give me a place to stand, and I shall move the world"
Archimedes

Manuscripts  don't burn
Mikhail Bulgakov

All things are in flux
Heraclitus

Each player must accept the cards life deals him or her: but once they are in hand, he or she alone must decide how to play the cards in order to win the game
Voltaire

What can be smashed should be smashed
Leon Trotsky

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” Gustav Flaubert


Break on through/To the other side -
The Doors

I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.
Mae West,
Do not understand me too quickly
Andre Gide

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself."
Marlene Dietrich