James McAvoy Monologues

Sometimes it takes a wrongdoer to show you when you are doing wrong.

Scotland. This nation brought the world television, the steam engine, golf, whiskey, penicillin, and of course, the deep-fried Mars bar. It is great being Scottish. We're such a uniquely successful race.

See, every time a woman drops her trousers: promotion. Every time a man drops theirs: disciplinary action. Where's the equality in that?

I think they've left me. I think my family have left me. I don't know how. I can't remember why. You see, there's something wrong with me. There is something seriously wrong with me.

I am on a murder case here. That's M-U-R-D-E-R, which spells S-E-R-I-O-U-S. So if I don't get my A-R-S-E in G-E-A-R, I'm in serious S-H-I-T, okay?

The games are always, repeat always, being played. But nobody plays the games like me. Detective Sergeant Bruce Robertson, soon to be Detective Inspector Bruce Robertson. You just have to be the best, and I usually am. Same rules apply.

I've always believed that it's the winning that's important, not the taking part.

I want you to show this bastard who the hardest firm in this city really is, OK? Nobody, nobody, steams in like the Edinburgh polis.

What value will there ever be in life, if we are not together?

I have no money, no property, I am entirely dependent upon that bizarre old lunatic, my uncle. I cannot yet offer marriage, but you must know what I feel. Jane, I'm yours. God, I'm yours. I'm yours, heart and soul. Much good that is.

How can you, of all people, dispose of yourself without affection?

Swifts, on a fine morning in May, flying this way, that way, sailing around at a great hight, perfectly happily. Then -

Then, one leaps onto the back of another, grasps tightly and forgetting to fly they both sink down and down, in a great dying fall, fathom after fathom, until the female utters…

The female utters a loud, piercing cry...

… of ecstasy.

Is this conduct commonplace in the natural history of Hampshire?

Good God. There's writing on both sides of those pages.

I have been told there is much to see upon a walk, but all I've detected so far is a general tendency to green above and brown below.

I would regard it as a mark of extreme favour if you would stoop to honour me with this next dance.

Vice leads to difficulty, virtue to reward. Bad characters come to bad ends.

What rules of conduct apply in this rural situation? We have been introduced, have we not?

If you wish to practice the art of fiction, to be considered the equal of a masculine author, experience is vital.

Your ignorance is understandable since you lack... What shall we call it? The history?

Condemns you to it and your writing to the status of female accomplishment. If you wish to practice the art of fiction, to be the equal of a masculine author, experience is vital.

Dearest Cecilia, the story can resume. The one I had been planning on that evening walk. I can become again the man who once crossed the surrey park at dusk, in my best suit, swaggering on the promise of life. The man who, with the clarity of passion, made love to you in the library. The story can resume. I will return. Find you, love you, marry you and live without shame.

How old do you have to be before you know the difference between right and wrong? Do you have to be eighteen? Do you have to be eighteen before you can bring yourself to own up to a lie? There are soldiers of eighteen old enough to be left to die on the side of the road! Did you know that?

Five years ago you didn't care about telling the truth. You and all your family, you just assumed that for all my education, I was still little better than a servant, still not to be trusted. Thanks to you, they were able to close ranks and throw me to the fucking wolves!

You'll go to your parents as soon as you can and tell them everything they need to know to be convinced that your evidence was false. You'll go and see a solicitor and make a statement and have it signed and witnessed and send copies to us. Is that clear?