Alasdair Gray Quotes

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

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.

Alasdair Gray

I asked the headmaster of literature, "Why are there so many headmasters and so few poets? Is it easier for you to train your own kind than ours?" He said, "No. The emperor needs all the headmasters he can get. If a quarter of his people were headmasters he would be perfectly happy. But more than two poets would tear his kingdom apart."

Alasdair Gray

Glasgow, the sort of industrial city where most people live nowadays but nobody imagines living.

Alasdair Gray

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

Alasdair Gray

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 seed-word is always so ordinary that hardly anyone perceives it. Classical odes grow from and or because, romantic lyrics from but or if. Immature verses expand a personal pronoun ad nauseam, the greatest works bring glory to a common verb.

Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray

Alasdair Gray

Creative Commons

Born: December 28, 1934

Died: December 29, 2019 (aged 85)

Bio: Alasdair Gray was a Scottish writer and artist. His most acclaimed work is his first novel, Lanark, published in 1981 and written over a period of almost 30 years.

Known for:

Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981)
Poor Things (1992)
1982, Janine (1984)
The Book of Prefaces
Unlikely stories, mostly (1951)

Alasdair Gray on Wikipedia

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