Quotes from Ali Smith

It takes a death sometimes to make us all live a bit more, Iris says.

It's quite like the songwriter actually couldn't be bothered to think of words...It will be precisely why the song sold so many copies and was such a big deal at the time. People like things not to be too meaningful.

It's good, to be seen past, as if you're not the only one, as if everything isn't happening just to you. Because you're not. And it isn't.

Do things just go away? her mother says. Do things that happened not exist, or stop existing, just because we can't see them happening in front of us? They do when they're over, George says. And what about the things we watch happening right in front of us and still can't really see? her mother says.

She had not expected, out in the world, to find herself quite so much the wrong sort of person.

She is not a girl. She is a block of stone. She is a piece of wall. She is something against which other things impact without her permission or understanding.

Even the machine has to encounter nature, not even it can escape the earth. There's something reassuring in that.

She looked at the girl in the chair and she saw what youth was. It was oblivious, with things in its ears.

Lise was lying in bed. That was what she was doing. There was something she had to write down. She was waiting to remember it. Thoughts were slowly unearthing in her brain, like turf being turned up by someone she could make out only on the distant horizon, on the edge of a waiting field, a person made so small by distance and so slowed with age or weariness that he or she could hardly wield the spade.

the room had been lost 'til then. So, if you were in a room, I mean if you were just sitting in a room, could the room you were in get lost?

Na, mondja. Figyelj. Nem szabad többé elhinned minden hazugságot arról, hogy a világ meg van mérgezve. És a bombákat. És a vegyszereket. Mert ebbÅ'l semmi nem igaz. Nem?, kérdi Arthur. Nem, mondja Sophia. Mert akik mindenfélét csinálnak a világban, miért ne a legjobbat akarnák a világnak?

Outside, the sun was shining. It was irrelevant. There was something Lise had to write down, again. What was it? I am a ( ) person.

One day instead the old woman said kind words to her and gave her an awning on a stick to keep rain off (there has been much rain in purgatorium)

L'amore se ne infischia del soldo, l'amore è più caldo del caldo. Che sia vinta la guerra o sia persa, è l'amore che il mondo attraversa. L'amore non fa rima né ha ragioni, l'amore rende pazzo chi lo ha. L'amore sopravvive alle stagioni […]. L'amore vince i giochi, ogni contesa, che scoppi sulla terra o dentro al mare. Nessuna risorsa è meglio spesa, di quelle bruciate per amare.

You can't stop change, the man says. It comes of necessity. You have to go with it and make something of what it makes of you.

As he said it Mark, belted in in the back seat, had watched the holy water glint inside the plastic bubble next to the Virgin Mary and had wondered if the holy water was selective too, and if that's what God was these days, and whether everybody now simply had a private god who sanctioned his or her own choices

Kärleken var död. Döden var död. En hel massa saker var döda. Vissa, däremot, var det inte, eller i alla fall inte än.

Detta gör dem rasande. Bra. De är från generationen som njuter av att vara rasande

She stops to make a note on her phone: abandon and presence, she writes. It's the first time she's felt like herself for quite some time.

Yes, but everywhere needs some defence against people just coming in and overrunning the place with their terrorisms or their deficiencies, eh, sweetheart, Richard says. That's right, Terence says. Got to keep all those bad refugees out. The ones looking for a better life. Couldn

Hello, he said. What you reading? Elisabeth showed him her empty hands. Does it look like I'm reading anything? she said. Always be reading something, he said. Even when we're not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.

A missed chance, a ruined life.

Livslånga vänskaper, sa han. Ibland får vi vänta en livstid på dem.

after she's dead she's going to come back every year as blossom on a tree. And if you die before me, he says, I will spend all the time I'm alive and not with you negotiating the various time differences across the world so that I can spend as much time as a man possibly can on this planet in springtime, in search of you