292 Quotes by Ali Smith

A great many men don’t understand a woman full of joy, even more don’t understand paintings full of joy by a woman.

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I’d much rather go and read a book.

So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us.

Imagine if you made something and then you always had to be seen through what you’d made, as if the thing you’d made became you.

Animals, Mark, have no use for nostalgia, Aunt Kenna says. It is not a tool for survival, my darling. But.

He also knows he is and will be being recorded by CCTV cameras on both sides of the station. He knows these are the kinds of cameras that don’t know anything, don’t show anything beyond surface. He knows that what they do is the stupid new way of knowing everything.

Looking in the mirror suddenly she thinks that we all know our dates of birth but that 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.

Think how quiet a book is on a shelf, he said, just sitting there, unopened. Then think what happens when you open it.

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.