Lanark Quotes

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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 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 refuse to believe men kill each other just to make their enemies rich."
"How can men recognize their real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?"
"My son won't be taught that," said Lanark firmly.
"You have a son?"
"Not yet.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“I ought to have more love before I die. I've not had enough.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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 than our experiences of the things they represent—”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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 that for fun."

"Yes, I read it for fun."

"People our age don't read that sort of book for fun. They read it to show they're superior."

"But I read this sort of book even when there's nobody around to see me."

"That shows you arenae trying to make us think you're superior, you're trying to make yourself think you're superior.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“He looked at them and saw their faces did not fit. The skin on the skulls crawled and twitched like half-solid paste. All the heads in his angle of vision seemed irregular lumps, like potatoes but without a potato’s repose: potatoes with crawling surfaces punctured by holes which opened and shut, holes blocked with coloured jelly or fringed with bone stumps, elastic holes through which air was sucked or squirted, holes secreting salt, wax, spittle and snot. He grasped a pencil in his trouser pocket, wishing it were a knife he could thrust through his cheek and use to carve his face down to the clean bone. But that was foolish. Nothing clean lay under the face. He thought of sectioned brains, palettes, eyeballs and ears seen in medical diagrams and butcher’s shops. He thought of elastic muscle, pulsing tubes, gland sacks full of lukewarm fluid, the layers of cellular and fibrous and granular tissues inside a head. What was felt as tastes, caresses, dreams and thoughts could be seen as a cleverly articulated mass of garbage.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“JUST BECAUSE YOU'RE PARANOID DON'T THINK THEY AREN'T PLOTTING AGAINST YOU.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“I intend to dance once with everybody - except the other Joy. I'm going to dance twice with the other Joy."
"Why?"
"Because being unusually kind to someone will give me a feeling of power.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“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. The stupid ones don't notice, they've been trained for it since they were babies, so they're happy. And of course the writer of that book made things obvious by speeding them up. What happens to the Blandish girl in a few weeks takes a lifetime for the rest of us.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“When a thing is perfect it is eternal. It can be destroyed afterward, or slowly decay, but its perfection is safe in the past, which is the only inevitable part of the universe.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“... I wish I could make you like death a little more. It's a great preserver. Without it the loveliest things change slowly into face, as you will discover if you insist on having much more life.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“He watched them with the passionate regret with which he saw them play football or go to dances: the activity itself did not interest, but the power to share it would have made him less apart.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“I STARTED MAKING MAPS WHEN I WAS SMALL SHOWING PLACE, RESOURCES, WHERE THE ENEMY AND WHERE LOVE LAY. I DID NOT KNOW
TIME ADDS TO LAND. EVENTS DRIFT CONTINUALLY DOWN, EFFACING LANDMARKS, RAISING THE LEVEL, LIKE SNOW.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“The world is only improved by people who do ordinary jobs and refuse to be bullied.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books

“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 difficult game, most folk play it instinctively.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“You pessimists always fall into the disillusion trap,” said the cheerful man cheerfully. “From one distance a thing looks bright. From another it looks dark. You think you’ve found the truth when you’ve replaced the cheerful view by the opposite, but true profundity blends all possible views, bright as well as dark.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“I’m over five and half feet tall and weigh about ten stone. My eyes are brown, hair black, and I forget the blood group. I used to be older than twenty but now I’m older than thirty. I’ve been called a crustacean, and too serious, but recently I was described by a dependable man as shrewd, obstinate and adequately intelligent. I was a writer once and now I’m a doctor, but I was advised to become these, I never wanted it. I’ve never wanted anything long. Except freedom.” There was a metallic rattle of laughter. Lanark said, “Yes, it’s a comic word. We’re all forced to define it in ways that make no sense to other people. But for me freedom is…” He thought for a while. “… life in a city near the sea or near the mountains where the sun shines for an average of half the day.”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark: A Life in Four Books

“I am simply a wounded and dying man.
Who can be more regal than a dying man?”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark

“Tell me, Dr. Lanark, is there a connection between your love of vast panorama and your distate for human problems?”
― Alasdair Gray, Lanark