Quotes from Ali Smith

I think nonsense raises two human urges. One: to be playful, be curious and curiouser, and 2: to make meaning out what seems to have none. Or flaunt having none. And since everything we do, being human, is up against time, nonsense is panacheful, cocks a snook at all the rules and regulations and reminds us of our freedoms up against the clock.

Invisible links like these were running between all of the people in the room that day, like they always are, like thin strands of light you couldn't see but you knew were there regardless.

he always went straight to the machines and in a strange way it was a relief to because having to talk with someone, even the smallest, most casual talks, was sometimes quite hard because you always felt they judged you or you always felt shy or that you were saying a stupid or wrong thing. The pitfalls of human exchange, Sophia said.

I love your kiss. Everything's sorted, and obvious, and understood, and civilised, your kiss says. It's a shut-eye lie, I know it is, because the music I didn't know before I knew you makes me open my eyes in a place of no sentimentality, where light itself is a kind of shadow, where everything is fragment-slanted.

I can make no dent in anything. I have nothing left to break.

I personally shall be giving her the benefits of the doubt, Elisabeth said. Now you're ready, Daniel said. Ready for what? Elisabeth said. Ready to bagatelle it as it is, Daniel said.

I don't like it when the summer goes and the autumn comes, she said. Daniel took her by the shoulders and turned her round. He didn't say anything. But all across the landscape down behind them it was still sunlit blue and green. She looked up at him showing her how the summer was still there. Nobody spoke like Daniel. Nobody didn't speak like Daniel.

Thank you for having me, death. Please excuse me, must get back to it, life.

Now that he's up on his feet he is hungry. Can you be hungry and dead? Course you can, all those hungry ghosts eating people's hearts and minds.

Look at that. He can sew. Not something he could do while he was alive. Death. Full of surprises.

One blink of a camera eye (can't quite put his finger on the name of the photographer) and that child dressed in leaves became all these things: sad, terribly, beautiful, funny, terrifying, dark, light, charming, fairystory, folkstory, truth.

He wraps it around him. It's a good fit, it smells leafy and fresh. He would make a good tailor. He has made something, made something of himself. His mother would be pleased at last. Oh God. Is there still mother after death?

thirty two years old, no-fixed-hours casual contract junior lecturer at a university in London, living the dream, her mother says, and she is, if the dream means having no job security and almost everything being too expensive to do and that you're still in the same rented flat you had when you were a student over a decade ago …

It's funny to be sitting on such an uncommunal communal chair.

The man creases up. It seems he was joking; his shoulders go up and down but no sound comes out of him. It's like laughter, but also like a parody of laughter, and simultaneously a bit like he's having an asthma attack. Maybe you're not allowed to laugh out loud behind the counter of the main Post Office.

p 22 end of 2nd paragraph – because her presence is not important- "Compared to those trees around the summerhouse she is the kind of meaningless tree the gets planted in the grassy areas of the car park of a supermarkets.

Hello Mr. Gluck, she'll say if he does. Sorry I'm late. I was having my face measured and rejected for being the wrong specification.

All the other houses have been pulled out of the street like bad teeth.

I like the idea of blue and pink together, Elisabeth said.

I hear them. But am I going to let it stop me reading?

I'm tired of the news...I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of the meanness. I'm tired of selfishness...I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring whether they're being lied to anymore. I'm tired of being made to feel this fearful.

So you were advised to go to Snappy Snaps already but you chose not to go, the woman says.

the whole point of Bagatelle is that you trifle with the stories that people think are set in stone.

nobody in their right minds could make that story any good. Is this a challenge to my right mind? Daniel said. Indubitably, Elisabeth said. Well then, Daniel said. My right mind will meet your challenge.