“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.”

“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.”

“You, dear reader, have now two accounts to choose between and there can be no doubt which is most probable.”

“Every stylistic excess and moral defect which critics conspired to ignore in the author's first books, LANARK and UNLIKELY STORIES, MOSTLY, is to be found here in concentrated form.”

“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.”

“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.”

“She also said the wicked people needed love as much as good people and were much better at it.”