Ali Smith
Ali Smith
Ali Smith CBE FRSLis a Scottish writer...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
bowie david difference footage life second war
How could 30 years be the blink-of-the-eye it felt? It was the difference between black-and-white footage of the Second World War and David Bowie on 'Top of the Pops' singing 'Life on Mars.'
before-its-too-late realizing fractions
Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.
goodness shattered filled
Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness.
tombstone want headstone
I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'
stella
Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down.
connections connected happens
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.
block exercise growing-stronger
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.
robins goodman
The proper word for me," Robin Goodman says, "is me.
rivers brave stories
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.
father book home
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.
remembers-you remember-you leafs
remember you must live. remember you most love. remainder you mist leaf.
clothes long important
I have thought for a long time that the way my clothes hang on me is more important than me inside them.
blessed good-friend two
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.
attractive
What I know most is that the difference between us is what makes us interesting and attractive and problematic and exciting and vital to each other. Give me difference over indifference any day.