Ali Smith Quotes

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• Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.

  Ali Smith

  Too Late, Realizing, Fractions

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• Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible.

  Ali Smith

  Two, Narrative, Invisible

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• Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

  Ali Smith

  Moving, Book, Mean

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• To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.

  Ali Smith

  Wells, Unimaginable, Known

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• Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down.

  Ali Smith

  Stella

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• We all know our dates of birth but . . . every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date.

  Ali Smith

  Years, Knowing, Important

  Ali Smith (2015). “Hotel World”, p.104, Penguin UK

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• We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

  Ali Smith

  Believe, Book, Reading

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• Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be re-skinned?

  Ali Smith

  Art

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• A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.

  Ali Smith

  Book, Argument, Proof

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• Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.

  Ali Smith

  Joy, Insightful, Stories

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• Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness.

  Ali Smith

  Goodness, Shattered, Filled

  Ali Smith (2007). “The Accidental”, p.49, Anchor

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• I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.

  Ali Smith

  Jobs, Get Better, Stories

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• I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

  Ali Smith

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• What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.

  Ali Smith

  Father, Book, Home

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• Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google.

  Ali Smith

  Google, Promise, Needs

  Ali Smith (2011). “There but for the”, p.100, Penguin UK

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• You never know if you're a writer. You can't trust it. If you woke up and said, 'I'm a writer,' it would be gone. You wouldn't see anything for miles - even the dust would be running away.

  Ali Smith

  Running, Dust, Would Be

  "Life stories". Interview with Louise France, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2005.

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• All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

  Ali Smith

  Book, Finals, Needs

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• Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.

  Ali Smith

  Moving, Space, Corsets

  "Life stories". Interview with Louise France, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2005.

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• Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

  Ali Smith

  Block, Exercise, Growing Stronger

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• We're well past the end of the century when time, for the first time, curved, bent, slipped, flash forwarded, and flashed back yet still kept rolling along. We know it all now, with our thoughts traveling at the speed of a tweet, our 140 characters in search of a paragraph. We're post-history. We're post-mystery.

  Ali Smith

  Character, Past, Firsts

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• Even things which seem separate and finished are infinitely connected and will infinitely connect. This connection happens as soon as you let it, as soon as you engage - as soon as you even attempt to engage.

  Ali Smith

  Connections, Connected, Happens

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• Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.

  Ali Smith

  Art, Way, Happens

  Ali Smith (2014). “How to be Both”, p.253, Penguin UK

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• My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

  Ali Smith

  Mother, Father, Somewhere Else

  "Once upon a life: Ali Smith" by Ali Smith, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2011.

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• I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

  Ali Smith

  Brother, Growing Up, Playing Games

  "Life stories". Interview with Louise France, www.theguardian.com. May 22, 2005.

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• It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.

  Ali Smith

  Important, Stories, Knows

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