“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 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”

“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.”

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

“Most of the seven billion people in this world suffer from malnutrition. Half do not have enough to eat and the rest of us eat too much.”

“Only bad religions depend on mysteries, just as bad governments depend on secret police." A character's response to a discussion about eating from the tree of knowledge.”

“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.”