“Who did the council fight?" "It split in two and fought itself." "That's suicide!" "No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is… — 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… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“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… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
“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… — Alasdair Gray Copy Share Image
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
