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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 Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

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More quotes by Alasdair Gray

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

Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

Work as if you live in the early days of a better world.

This slip has been inserted by mistake.

Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

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.

Unlikely Stories, Mostly (1983)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alasdair Gray (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.