“What would happen if most people tried to act intelligently on their own behalf? Anarchy. (…) So what can we do with this intelligence we don't need and can't use? Stupefy it. Valium for housewives, glue-sniffing for schoolkids, hash for… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“At last she interrupted with a harsh rattle of laughter. "Oh, yes, I like this book! Crazy hopes of a glamorous, rich, colorful life and then abduction, rape, slavery. That book, at least, is true." "It is not true. It is a male sex fantasy." "And life for most women is just that, a performance in a male sex fantasy.… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share
“Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police." A character's response to a discussion about eating from the… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
But I do enjoy words—some words for their own sake! Words like river, and dawn, and daylight, and time. These words seem much richer… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“Lanark said irritably, "You seem to understand my questions, but your answers make no sense to me." "That's typical of life, isn't it?” — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
Are there many people without illness or disability who sit at home in the evening with clenched fists, continually changing the channel of a… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“The world sometimes seems a chessboard where the pieces move themselves. I'm never sure what square to go to. Yet it can't be a… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
A good poem is a tautology. It expands one word by adding a number which clarify it, thus making a new word which has never before been spoken. The seedword is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but and if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam,… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share
“But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.” — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“One day after the exams, the teachers sat at their desks correcting papers while the pupils read comics, played chess or cards or talked quietly in groups. Coulter at a desk in front of Thaw turned round and said, "What are ye reading?" Thaw showed a book of critical essays on art and literature. Coulter said accusingly, "You don't read… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share
Think of Florence, Paris, London, New York. Nobody visiting them for the first time is a stranger because he's already visited them in paintings,… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart. — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
