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Top Alasdair Gray Quotes

Browse top 29 most favorite famous quotes and sayings by Alasdair Gray.

Favorite Alasdair Gray Quotes

1. "Movement turns dead dogs into maggots and daisies, and flour butter sugar an egg and a tablespoon of milk into Abernethy biscuits, and spermatozoa and ovaries into fishy little plants growing babyward if we take no care to stop them." ~ Alasdair Gray
2. "I ought to have more love before I die. I've not had enough." ~ Alasdair Gray
3. "-E?ti aici ca sa înve?i, nu sa gânde?ti. E?ti bursier? (…) – Nu vad de ce impozitele platite de mine ar sus?ine un student care nu în?elege scopul universita?ii." ~ Alasdair Gray
4. "He frowned at his shows for a moment then looked up with sudden brightness saying, "Tell me, Dr. Lanark, is there a connection between your love of vast panorama and your distaste for human problems?"Lanark said nothing." ~ Alasdair Gray
5. "He contained two equal sorts of knowledge: the warm lazy knowledge that above on the mountain a blond girl in a white dress waited for him, shy and eager; and the cooler knowledge that this was unlikely and the good of climbing was the exercise and view from the top. There was no conflict between these knowledges, his mind passed easily from one to the other, but when he stood up to begin the last of the climb the thought of the girl was stronger." ~ Alasdair Gray
6. "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
7. "Numai religiile proaste sunt dependente de mistere, a?a cum guvernele proaste depind de poli?iile secrete - Goodwin Baxter" ~ Alasdair Gray
8. "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" ~ Alasdair Gray
9. "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." ~ Alasdair Gray
10. "Work as if you live in the early days of a better nation." ~ Alasdair Gray
11. "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
12. "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." ~ Alasdair Gray
13. "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
14. "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
15. "You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable." ~ Alasdair Gray
16. "I distrust speech therapy. Words are the language of lies and evasions. Music cannot lie. Music talks to the heart." ~ Alasdair Gray
17. "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
18. "Glasgow is still full of churches built in the last century. Half of them have been turned into warehouses." ~ Alasdair Gray
19. "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
20. "I tried to scream like you once screamed God since I wanted to make the whole world faint but Harry Astley clapped his hand over my mouth O the sheer joy of feeling my teeth sink in." ~ Alasdair Gray
21. "Baxter knows a lot more than I do, I told her.Yes, said Baxter, but I will never tell people all of it." ~ Alasdair Gray
22. "She is the swelling sail, trim rigging and bust sunlit deck of our matrimonial yacht. I am the low hull, with the invisible ballast and keel." ~ Alasdair Gray
23. "She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it." ~ Alasdair Gray
24. "Are there many people without illness or disability who sit at home in the evening with clenched fists, continually changing the channel of a television set and wishing they had the courage to roll over the parapet of a high bridge? I bet there are millions of us." ~ Alasdair Gray
25. "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
26. "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." ~ Alasdair Gray
27. "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
28. "Her book was filled with centaurs because she had not fully grasped the complexity of actual people, actual horses." ~ Alasdair Gray
29. "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

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Today's Quote

Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God—experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion—all about feeling God in nature, and so on—is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work: like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map."
Author: C.S. Lewis

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Here
Use
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Per
Hen
Hey
Word
Sin
She
Care
Thou
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Half
Self
Owe
Boo
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Ought
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Using
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Ally
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