Stephen Richards Author Quotes

If you want the Cinderella moments then you have to believe in magick.

We invent what we need to get us by, but in doing so we are really continuing to hold on to the pain of yesterday.

This was a new buzz, better than anything I’d tried before. For the first time, I could fight back at others. I’d even fight with a parked car! I was totally kyboshed on these drugs, I didn’t care how many boys were standing outside the pub, I’d run over and fight the lot of them. Even though I came off second best, in my mind, I still walked away a winner. I showed them I wasn’t a little shit-bag that always got battered, not when I had the drugs in me.

Do not be deceived that you are weak because you have forgiven; instead be rest assured that you are now showing great strength - after all, forgiving is one of the most difficult things to do.

Adrian (not sure if real Christian name?) was a PTI in Perth Prison before he came to work in the special units with us. Adrian was a gentleman, but he was also a very, very hard man that didn’t take any shit. He is now working up in Inverness Prison, but I can tell you, this man can go for fun. I have witnessed him in action, I have been about all the diggers in Scotland ten times over and I would put this man up there with the best of them for a roll about with the prisoner.

If we studied the issue of forgiveness with a wider perspective, we are bound to opt for it after all.

The junkies had themselves a field day, they didn’t care for the safety of the overseas tourists, no sir. They would stop at nothing. Some tourists were left bloodied and battered on the sacred ground of the Wallace Monument, minus their video cameras and the likes. The camera’s were soon sold to a fence in the Raploch for pennies, compared to the actual price it was worth, then the junkies didn’t waste much time getting to Big Mags’ door with the £20 that they had got from the local fence in the nearby neighbourhood.

You are born, you live and then you die. But when you forgive you are free to live again!

When you are desperately grabbing at straws all you get is a handful of weeds.

Gazing out of the window, the gravel path roared as it was crushed into submission under the wheels of the car that was taking me towards a menacing looking medieval castle with two huge and terrifying turrets that seemingly reached out towards me. I imagined that I was the gravel and the wheels of the car were the social care system.

Ian Brady was born Ian Duncan Stewart on 2 January 1938 in Glasgow, Scotland, he’s responsible for a series of murders that took place from 1962 until 1965 in Greater Manchester. Brady and Myra Hindley met in 1961, she was a 19-year-old typist, he was a 23-year-old stock clerk. By 1966, both were tried at Chester Assizes for multiple murder. The trial lasted 15 days; Brady and Hindley were convicted on 6 May 1966, sentenced to life imprisonment.

Being joyous or happy is not something you should feel guilty about.

If we let the drama of others’ lives become our own, then we are no longer ourselves. We become the reflections of others’ dramas and their lives, their tragedies, and their misfortunes become our own.

The moment we see beyond our personal desires to be felt sympathy for, that is the time we can actually start the journey to that final destination of true forgiveness.

If you truly want to help the poor, first become rich yourself.

It does not matter if you are asking for health, for happiness, for financial wealth, or for all three. It doesn’t matter if you have no idea how this will come to you. Neither does it matter if you have no reason to expect it to.

Remember, forgiveness is not a millstone but a milestone!

Other people may well not find it relevant that you have forgiven yourself, but you need to know that it is not for them anyway. Everything at the moment is wholly about you.

I was also in Glenochil Prison in 1992 when Hammy was stabbed five times in the chest and belly off another man called Fudge, but give Hammy his dues, he never tried to jail bait his attacker up. Fudge never got any more time to his sentence for the frenzied attack on Hammy. This man has also had pit bulls and rottweiler dogs set on him and guess what, he beat the dogs.

Just as chillingly as Manuel took police to the spot where he had buried 17-year-old Isabella Cooke, it was reminiscent of this when Brady took police to Saddleworth Moor in Yorkshire, when he and Hindley were flown there by helicopter to walk on the graves of more victims.

Over the years you have been subjected to a great deal of mind propaganda which has resulted in you reaching the ceiling of maximum potential by virtue of your current limited mindset.

Cooking is great, but the meal that has been prepared for you with love is the best.

The idea of forgiveness is a journey that requires patience. If the journey of forgiveness is well travelled, there is a chance that we are bound to change in a very helpful way.

When the infamous Shotts riot of ‘93 kicked off, Dingus was in the hall but he never started it or took any part in it whatsoever, he just sat in one of his friend’s cell, smoking hash, waiting for the riot to end. Dingus had seen all the crazy shit before.

Rockweiler (nickname) has settled down over the years, he is a man mountain, he stands some six-and-a-half foot tall, and is round about eighteen or nineteen stones in weight. He too works in Barlinnie, this dog was responsible for giving the Wendy House seg unit the tough name tag, as he dished out the beatings to some very hard prisoners in the past. I can’t take that away from him, but he was a bit of a shit bag as well because he wore the full riot body armour when he offered to fight.

Porkie and me came to some sort of agreement with the screw and the nurse, and after some haggling we gave ourselves up. After that, I never saw my friend Porkie again until we appeared at Edinburgh High Court, where we each got six years on top of our sentences for one night of madness. That just shows you how drugs can get a grip over your mind.

The screws are just as bad as us, maybe not now but certainly in the past they used to beat you with their riot batons, strip you naked, cuff your hands behind your backs and then take shots of kicking you in the head and body until you were knocked out.

You can learn to heal yourself, learn to understand that the pain you feel today is the strength you feel tomorrow!

Turning images from within our minds into reality is a gift we are all born with.

Aberdeenshire’s Peterhead jail housed the hardest, badest, meanest motherfucker prisoners in the Scottish prison system. So no one was surprised when the pressure pot jail finally erupted in to violence that has not been seen or equalled since.

Laughter is the most powerful weapon against verbal attack anyone can have.

I pulled the homemade jail knife out that I had in my hand, Porkie pulled out the very sharp lockback knife that he had concealed up his sleeve. We told the warden and nurse to sit on the floor, and if they did as we told them then no one would get hurt.

You know, in a society where children just about have to seek parental permission to sit on Santa’s knee, the word ‘paedophile’ should send more shivers up your spine than the word ‘druggie’.

Before making a snap judgment, ask yourself if it really is something that has hurt you or simply just made you angry at yourself for allowing it to happen. It’s amazing what ‘sleeping on it’ can do. A new day sees a new beginning.

I have known Hammy for years, he has been shot in the chest twice at point blank range with a sawn off shotgun. The other hard men must have been shocked when he got out the car he was in and chased them with his own hand gun, he has also been stabbed multiple times in prison and out on the rough tough streets of Glasgow but he is still standing.

Focus only on your successes and you will never know failure...

If you want to surpass the stages of doubt and secure better communication between your inner and outer body it is wise to surpass the challenge of the words ‘if only’.

When you keep a strong image of what you want in your mind, and possess the conviction that it is yours by right, you send out powerful vibrations to the farthest reaches of the universe.

Physically it is impossible for a bee to fly, but because it believes it can then it can.

Before Mags became a household name across Scotland, it was during the mid Nineties when she became an avid anti-paedophile campaigner against paedophiles on the Raploch Estate, attracting media attention, even appearing on Robert Kilroy-Silk’s morning TV show. At the height of her anti-paedophilic crusade, she led a howling mob of protesters to a hostel near her home where a known paedophile was staying.

You are simply naturally inclined to make mistakes just as everyone else is, whether male or female, black or white, young or old. These mistakes are your school of learning, therefore forgiveness is your greatest teacher in this school of learning.

Always stay strong to your dream because when you lose sight of it then that is when your dream dies!

Simply put, mind power is placing a request, or a wish, if you will, and trusting that somehow it will come to be.

There are many instances when one person is enough to change the world.

Overly playing the role of the victim can debar you from accepting responsibility for your actions and emotions.

If you believe that that the one opportunity you missed is the last one you’ll ever get, then that is exactly what will happen: no more opportunities ever.

Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill - While I’m mentioning drug dealers, I have to give a mention to a man hated by the peddlers of soul destroying stuff, big Brian ‘The Tax Man’ Cockerill (AKA as Scot’s Brian), born on 16 December 1964 in Coatbridge, in Lanarkshire, at 6ft 3in, with 23 stone of rock solid muscle, his awesome power has made him a truly terrifying force in Britain’s underworld. A walking colossus, anyone who gets in his way and tries to stay there had better be ready for the hiding of their life.

Gary Moore is another legendary figure of sheer violence. In prison, Gary has spent most of his adult life inside one jail or another. When, on the odd occasion, he does get out of prison, it doesn’t take him long to go on a murderous campaign of total terror. Gary has been charged and stood trial for some three or four different murders.

Sometimes your wish can become chaos ... be careful what you wish for!

Just as the universe is in constant flux, so too are we in constant change, and we must accept that.

As for that Maxine Carr, she could have helped clear up the murders much quicker, but she chose not to grass her lover to the coppers, no one in the criminal world likes grasses, but this isn’t any normal criminal case. Huntley isn’t a criminal, he is a total fucking, monster beast who, if I had my way, I could hang him in Soham town hall for the families to see.

Neglected dreams become regrets.

The word ‘believe’ is an important factor in you securing your success.

Blaming other people inevitably makes us blame ourselves because if we are pointing the finger at someone, practically, we are pointing it at ourselves as well.

The most basic method one can use to let go of the past is by looking at it as a learning experience.

Mags seemed to attract trouble wherever she went. The Raploch Estate in Stirling was a nice backdrop, a middleclass place to live and bring up your kids until the scourge of drugs took a grip of its sons and daughters, like any other quiet township. The more the people needed drugs, the rougher and more violent the place became.

By today’s standards, if you go by the early morning TV misery shows, my broken home family of mixed parentage siblings was quite normal.

From the tens of thousands of criminals I have mixed with behind bars and in the streets or have known of over the last three decades of my criminally active life, the Eighties, Nineties and Naughties, I have selected the crème de la crème of the toughest, maddest, hardest Scottish bastards that have ever drawn breath.

I keep telling the screws over and over again, ‘If you treat a young boy in prison like a dog, keep him in a cell that is like a cage and constantly beat him and bully him, that boy is going to grow up hating yous and the system.’ The only thing on his mind will be revenge, maybe it is not revenge on the screws that so frequently bullied and tortured him, but in the boy’s eyes he is getting revenge on the uniform, as it all means the same thing in the boy’s or man’s eyes.

You are not, though, forgiving so as to let others off with things. You are forgiving so that you can empower yourself to get over it and become strong.