Generally speaking, I focus on the music rather than the lyrics. However, in the case of Van der Graaf Generator, the lyrics are an extra dimension to the music that I enjoy, and there are particular lyrics that I especially like.

My favourite VdGG lyric is my signature ("I was thinking about thinking but it really didn't get me very far."), which is the opening lyric of Blackroom (from Time Vaults - and hence a VdGG lyric and not just a Peter Hammill lyric).

Other favourite lyrics include:

"I run because I don't know where the prison lies."

"You'll begin to wonder if the points of all the ancients myths are solemnly directed straight at you."

"Ghosts betray you, ghosts betray you, in the night they steal your eye from its socket and the ball hangs fallen on your cheek."

"It's far too late to turn, unless it's to stone."

"Alone, he opens to the world... but it's much too late. He's been left, in the end, without a face."

"She's into lizards, she's into snakes, he's into trauma - still got the shakes from a lady who only talked dogs and cats making love in the alley - she thought like that."

"Living, if you claim that all that entails is breathing, eating, defecating, screwing, drinking, spewing, sleeping, sinking ever down and down and ultimately passing away time which no longer has any meaning."

What are your favourite VdGG lyrics?

"I've learned my lines, I know them so well, 
I am ready to tell whoever will finally come in
of the line in my mind that's cold in the night....
It doesn't seem right
when there's that little dark figure running.
Won't somebody help me?"

I prophesy disaster wrote: My favourite VdGG lyric is my signature ("I was thinking about thinking but it really didn't get me very far.")

-needs to be added imo. Don't really have a favorite but I think his songwriting skills peaked lyrically ca. 1973-1975 but but he's great both before and after of course. 

Pretty keen - yes, my hobby keeps me busy
And if I talk to myself, what's the crime?
In the darkroom I am a dealer in space and time...
When all memory is mellowed,
When the photograph is yellowed,
Still it never lies.

There you are, your eyes laced with secret pleasure,
Saying that you're on the way to change,
Devouring in inordinate measure
Every diversion that's arranged.
For every appetite, a cruel attraction,
But there's a panic in your actions...
Oh, I never saw you look so strange.

Fixing memory chemically,
Holding time on the stop-clock,
Hanging back from that last frame
Just in case it didn't show you
In the way I used to know you...
I thought you'd always stay the same.
(But you won't.)

Oh, the red light, the silver, the black and the bromide;
The silence, the waiting for overview...
The past seems under-exposed, low tide,
But still the images ghost through.
And you're there in the bath,
Which is all this has led to,
And I can't say your path
Is a right one to choose...

But then I only have a negative of you.