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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

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Ali Smith
Age: 62
Born: 1962
Born: January 1
Author
Journalist
Playwright
Writer
Never
Close
Would
Inside
Modern
Head
Came
Eye
Ancient
Thought
Smile
Nothing
Saws

More quotes by Ali Smith

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The proper word for me, Robin Goodman says, is me.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.
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Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.
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I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.
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A game one of my sisters will play with me in my first year of being alive is called Good Baby, Bad Baby. This consists of being told I am a good baby until I smile and laugh, then being told I am a bad baby until I burst into tears. This training will stand me in good stead all through my life.
Ali Smith
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I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.
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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.
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The head has its confines. The head’s got those all right, and the heart. The heart has its reasons.
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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.
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Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.
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Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.
Ali Smith
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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.
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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
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Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.
Ali Smith
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I wouldn't call my work Modernist. I would rust if I try to think about labels. I'd feel like the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz.
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Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down.
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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