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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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

Book, Reading, Believe

"Ali Smith". Book by Ali Smith, therumpus.net. 2012.

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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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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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All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.

Ali Smith

Eye, Broken, Might

Ali Smith (2014). “How to be Both”, p.370, Penguin UK

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There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.

Ali Smith

Said, Knows, Hard

Ali Smith (2007). “The Accidental”, p.117, Anchor

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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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There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.

Ali Smith

Looks, Kind

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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

"Ali Smith: Style vs content? Novelists should approach their art with an eye to what the story asks". www.theguardian.com. August 18, 2012.

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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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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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Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.

Ali Smith

Air, Smell, Tonight

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The whole point is, we can forget. It’s important that we forget some things. Otherwise we’d go round the world carrying a hodload of stuff we just don’t need.

Ali Smith

Important, Needs, World

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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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And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.

Ali Smith

Rivers, Brave, Rope

Ali Smith (2007). “Girl Meets Boy”, p.160, Canongate Books

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remember you must live. remember you most love. remainder you mist leaf.

Ali Smith

Remember You, Remembers You, Mist

Ali Smith (2015). “Hotel World”, p.26, Penguin UK

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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 want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.

Ali Smith

Bored, Want, Being Bored

Ali Smith (2014). “How to be Both”, p.252, Penguin UK

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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

"Ali Smith: Style vs content? Novelists should approach their art with an eye to what the story asks". www.theguardian.com. August 18, 2012.

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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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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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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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Then I saw her smile so close to my eye that there was nothing to see but the smile and the thought came into my head that I’d never been inside a smile before. Who’d have thought being inside a smile would be so ancient and so modern both at once

Ali Smith

Eye, Would Be, Saws

Ali Smith (2007). “Girl Meets Boy”, p.102, Canongate Books

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Ali Smith

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Born: 1962
Occupation: Writer
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