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Lanark
Alasdair Gray
Top 10 Best 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“I ought to have more love before I die. I've not had enough.”
“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.”
“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—”
“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.”
“But leaders need to be mostly dead. People want solid monuments to cling to, not confused men like themselves.”
“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.”
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Book Keywords:
literature, dystopia, politics, glasgow, society