Ali Smith
Ali Smith
Ali Smith CBE FRSLis a Scottish writer...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
important stories knows
It is important to know the stories and histories of things, even if all we know is that we don't know.
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.
jobs get-better stories
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.
joy stories tough
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.
art craft crafty dark great light notions quite time twin word
It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the craft and the crafty of it - I've been preoccupied with the word 'artful' and the twin notions of 'cornucopia' and 'pickpocket' it suggests for quite some time.
looks kind
There is a kind of poetry, bad and good, in evrything, everywhere we look.
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.
book needs alive
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.
moving space corsets
Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.
eye broken might
All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.
art way happens
Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.
heart reason
The head has its confines. The head’s got those all right, and the heart. The heart has its reasons.
tombstone want headstone
I don't want a tombstone. You could carve on it 'She never actually wanted a tombstone.'
art
Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be re-skinned?