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Art is the only work open to people who can’t get along with others and still want to be special.”
“An artist doesn’t tell people things, he expresses himself. If the self is unusual his work shocks or excites people.
he noticed half the words had no definite meanings, having been added to make the sentences sound better than they were.
I could leave a nurse here but their damned professional cheerfulness depresses introspective men.
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.
Who can be more regal than a dying man?”
I want to be free, and freedom is freedom from other people!”
Compared with his phone number our closest friend is shifty and treacherous.
our idea of the man is only slightly like him.
He had not returned to exactly the same house.
He had bitten into the splendid fruit of the afternoon and found a core of harsh dull words.
life was a succession of dull habits in which he did what was asked automatically, only resenting demands to show interest.
Must everything we do satisfy someone else before it’s worthwhile?
You’d think love was something different. Oh, no. It has to be studied, practised, learnt, and you can get it wrong.”
How could the world be justified except as punishment?
I bet you felt very special and superior, being punished by God for something he doesnae give a damn for in other folk.
He thought how pleasant it would be to get home and sit by the bedroom fire drinking tea with his mother, then remembered this was impossible.
Mind you, this feeling doesnae last. You stop thinking. 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. Then accidents happen that start you thinking again.
“So you paint to give Glasgow a more imaginative life.” “No. That’s my excuse. I paint because I feel cheap and purposeless when I don’t.”
My mother told her she wasn’t fit to sleep with a pig. Which forced me into the unenviable position of declaring she was fit to sleep with a pig,”
Everything he saw seemed made of panic.
Many hard workers make nothing but wealth.
They refused to see they could make what they needed for each other and to hell with profit.
The energy to pay for it would be deducted from your future.”
“Come what may, the world will hear the truth,” murmured the quiet man. “We’ll quote you as saying that.”
He lay thinking of how he kept being pushed into certain actions, and how people kept talking to him as though he had planned them.
He decided that whatever happened he would remain dour, sceptical and unimpressed.
