Ali Smith

I have a theory, now - that the whole of the Renaissance was peopled with girls dressed as boys so they could…

— Ali Smith

“Human beings have to be more ingenious than this, and more generous. We’ve got to come up with a better answer.”

— Ali Smith

“A man interested in the meaning of words, not one whose interests leave words meaningless.”

— Ali Smith

“She was living in a time when historically it was permissible to smile like that above the face of someone who had…

— Ali Smith

“That’s what winter is: an exercise in remembering how to still yourself then how to come pliantly back to life again.”

— Ali Smith

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

— Ali Smith

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

— Ali Smith

“He had seemed a man with whom the right kind of dialogue would be possible.”

— Ali Smith

“You're going to have to learn the kind of hope that makes things history. Otherwise there'll be no good hope for your…

— Ali Smith

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember…

— Ali Smith

I grew up completely alone but with all the comforts of knowing I had a cushioning family structure around me - and…

— Ali Smith

“I'm everything that makes everything. I'm everything that unmakes everything. I'm fire. I'm flood. I'm pestilence. I'm the ink, the paper, the…

— Ali Smith

“I would rather die and to go hell than wake up one day and find myself an inmate in that guesthouse of…

— Ali Smith

It's about the connecting force from form to form. It's the toe bone connecting to the shoulder bone. It's the bacterial kick…

— Ali Smith

Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before…

— Ali Smith

It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the…

— Ali Smith

“It's probably the closest thing resembling research I ever do (except for this last book, which took more traditional research) - listen…

— Ali Smith

A game one of my sisters will play with me in my first year of being alive is called Good Baby, Bad…

— Ali Smith

What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong.…

— Ali Smith

“What would happen if you did just shut a door and stop speaking? Hour after hour after hour of no words. Would…

— Ali Smith

Outside the leaves on the trees constricted slightly; they were the deep done green of the beginning of autumn. It was a…

— Ali Smith

“... because I can read you like a book and because the thing about a beloved book, if it's a good one,…

— Ali Smith

“Rule Britannia, a bunch of thugs had been sing-shouting in the street at the weekend past Elisabeth's flat. Britannia rules the waves.…

— Ali Smith

“I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s…

— Ali Smith

“And which comes first? her unbearable mother is saying. What we see or how we see it?”

— Ali Smith

My nature is feminist. How could you not be a feminist and be alive? The world is full of brilliant, interesting women.

— Ali Smith

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

— Ali Smith

“Așa că s-a dus direct afară și a spart o fereastră drept cadou de ziua ei. Halal cadou, spune Midge. De ziua…

— Ali Smith

“Time travel is real, Daniel said. We do it all the time. Moment to moment, minute to minute.”

— Ali Smith

I don't have a night stand. If I read at night in bed or too close to sleep-time, I lie awake thinking…

— Ali Smith

“There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in everything, everywhere we look.”

— Ali Smith

“That's one of the things stories and books can do, they can make more than one time possible at once.”

— Ali Smith

“I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s…

— Ali Smith

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

— Ali Smith

I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'

— Ali Smith

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

— Ali Smith

“I fall in love. More figuratively speaking, I am walking along the road one day when out of nowhere I am struck…

— Ali Smith

“And they all died happily ever after. A very happy ending," the littlest one said.”

— Ali Smith

Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the…

— Ali Smith

Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows…

— Ali Smith