"Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late."
"What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it."
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Source: Once upon a life: Ali Smith by Ali Smith, www.theguardian.com. May 28, 2011.
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"Every great narrative is at least two narratives, if not more - the thing that is on the surface and then the things underneath which are invisible."
"Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay."
"Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything."
"I wouldn't call my work Modernist. I would rust if I try to think about labels. I'd feel like the Tin Man in 'The Wizard of Oz."
"To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better."