292 Quotes by Ali Smith

It isn’t that kind of relationship,” Elisabeth says to a lover. “It isn’t even the least physical. It never has been. But it’s love. I can’t pretend it isn’t.

It was cruel, though, to want to, and tempting, so I’d become an expert at almost.

I don’t know that I believe in gods enough to ask of them. But if they exist and I might be so bold as to say, excuse me, if you’re there can you please make that sunlit summer day longer and these dark days shorter.

Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about. Then the seedheads rattle, the seeds fall out. Then there’s even more language waiting to come up.

Elisabeth skims the day’s paper on her phone to catch up on the usual huge changes there’ve been in the last half hour.

Then the three minutes of black and white are over and what’s left is the story of human beings and air, something we hardly ever notice or think about, something we couldn’t live without.

EM Forster, though, saw it a little more evenhandedly: ’when human beings love they try to get something. They also try to give something, and this double aim makes love more complicated than food or sleep. It is selfish and altruistic at the same time, and no amount of specialization in one direction quite atrophies the other.

Got a light? See? Careful. I’m everything you ever dreamed.

There’s always, there’ll always be, more story. That’s what story is.