Quotes from Alasdair Gray

Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation.

You suffer from the oldest delusion in politics. You think you can change the world by talking to a leader. Leaders are the effects, not the causes of changes.

She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.

there were certain chapters when I stopped writing, saw the domestic situation I was in and thought, "I don't want to face this world, let's get back to the hellish one I'm imagining.

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, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb. Good poems, therefore, are always close to banality, over which, however, they tower like precipices.

Life becomes a habit. You get up, dress, eat, go tae work, clock in etcetera etcetera automatically, and think about nothing but the pay packet on Friday and the booze-up last Saturday. Life's easy when you're a robot.

Besides, a life without freedom to choose is not worth having.

I ought to have more love before I die. I've not had enough.

People in Scotland have a queer idea of the arts. They think you can be an artist in your spare time, though nobody expects you to be a spare-time dustman, engineer, lawyer or brain surgeon.

People who care nothing for their country's stories and songs,' he said, 'are like people without a past- without a memory- they are half people

Glasgow is a magnificent city," said McAlpin. "Why do we hardly ever notice that?" "Because nobody imagines living here…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, novels, history books and films. But if a city hasn't been used by an artist not even the inhabitants live there imaginatively.

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 separation.

I clenched my teeth and fists to stop them biting and scratching these clever men who want no care for the helpless sick small, who use religions and politics to stay comfortably superior to all that pain: who make religions and politics, excuses to spread misery with fire and sword and how could I stop all this? I did not know what to do.

But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.

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 tree of knowledge.

One day you will tell me how to change what I cannot yet describe without my words swelling HUGE, vowels vanishing, tears washing ink away.

Dear God I am tired. It is late. Writing like Shakespeare is hard work for a woman with a cracked head who cannot spell properly.

Readers develop unique histories with the books they read. It may not be immediately apparent at the time of reading, but the person you were when you read the book, the place you were where you read the book, your state of mind while you read it, your personal situation (happy, frustrated, depressed, bored) and so on – all these factors, and others, make the simple experience of reading a book a far more complex and multi-layered affair than might be thought.

Her book was filled with centaurs because she had not fully grasped the complexity of actual people, actual horses.

I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.

What satisfaction do you, personally, get from being a writer?" Lanark tried to remember. He said, "It's the only disciplined work I remember trying. I sleep better for it.

I'm afraid you'll have to take up art. Art is the only work open to people who can't get along with others and still want to be special.

Metaforen är ett av tankens väsentligaste verktyg. Den belyser vad som annars skulle ligga helt i mörker. Men denna belysning blir ibland så klar att den bländar istället för avslöjar.

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?