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Quote by Alasdair Gray

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

Quote by Alasdair Gray

Author

Alasdair Gray, born on December 28, 1934, is a Scottish writer known for his unique literary style and profound philosophical insights. His works, including 'The Black Boat' and 'The Cat's Cradle', are celebrated for their distinctive approach and deep thought. more

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“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.”

Ifs Grows Common Numbers Glory Ordinary Perceive Ads Verses Towers One Word Verbs Immature Precipice Banality New Words Pronouns Odes Tautology

Author:Alasdair Gray

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

Heart Lying Language Speech Therapy Distrust Evasion Speech Therapy

Author:Alasdair Gray

“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—”

Seems Enjoy Rivers Sake Dawn Daylight

Author:Alasdair Gray

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

Has Beens Stills Lasts Church Half Century Built Warehouse Glasgow

Author:Alasdair Gray

“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.”

Ifs Littles Care Turns Growing Dog Movement Plant Eggs Milk Sugar Daisies Biscuits Flour Maggots Ovaries Fishy Dead Dog Plants Growing

Author:Alasdair Gray

“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.”

People Men Way War Grows Pleasure Half Ordinary Stronger Separation Violent Heat Efficient Behaviour Pie Recipes Machinery Other Half

Author:Alasdair Gray

“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.”

Ifs Thinking Firsts Book Film Used Artist Cities Novel New York Painting First Time Stranger London Paris Visiting History Books Florence

Book:Chapman

Source: Chapman

“I take a less gloomy view. A good life means fighting to be human under growing difficulties. A lot of young folk know this and fight very hard, but after a few years life gets easier for them and they think they've become completely human when they've only stopped trying. I stopped trying, but my life was so full of strenuous routines that I wouldn't have noticed had it been not for my disease. My whole professional life was a diseased and grandiose attack on my humanity. It is an achievement to know that I am simply a wounded and dying man. Who can be more regal than a dying man?”

“Imaginatively Glasgow exists as a music hall song and a few bad novels.”

Song Novel Halls Glasgow Music Hall

Book:Chapman

Source: Chapman

“I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.”

Trying Different Past Tragic Parts Of Life Beginners

Author:Ian Hamilton Finlay