How to Be Both
Ali Smith
Top 10 Best Quotes
“Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen.”
“Girl : do you hear me? cause although it seemed to be the end of the world to me - it wasn't. There was a lot more world : cause roads that look set to take you in one direction will sometimes twist back on themselves without ever seeming anything other than straight, ... many things get forgiven in the course of a life : nothing is finished or unchangeable except death and even death will bend a little if what you tell of it is told right.”
“Cause nobody's the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves - except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends. Other than these, we go out anonymous into the insect air and all we are is the dust of colour, brief engineerings of wings towards a glint of light on a blade of grass or a leaf in a summer dark.”
“I forgive. Cause nobody knows us : except our mothers, and they hardly do (and also tend disappointingly to die before they ought). Or our fathers, whose failings while they’re alive (and absences after they’re dead) infuriate. Or our siblings, who want us dead too cause what they know about us is that somehow we got away with not having to carry the bricks and stones like they did all those years. Cause nobody’s the slightest idea who we are, or who we were, not even we ourselves – except, that is, in the glimmer of a moment of fair business between strangers, or the nod of knowing and agreement between friends. Other than these, we go out anonymous into the insect air and all we are is the dust of colour, brief engineering of wings towards a glint of light on a blade of grass or a leaf in a summer dark.”
“... always looking off to the side. But that's good too. 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.”
“When you've nothing, at least you've all of it.”
“It was all : it was nothing : it was more than enough.”
“All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other.”
“And which comes first? her unbearable mother is saying. What we see or how we see it?”
“I want to be bored. But I can't. But I really don't want to be this thing that I'm having to be instead of being bored.”
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Book Keywords:
alone, human-condition, knowledge-of-self
