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When we meet a work of art, there's something about that encounter that isn't fixed in time, but rather, it unfixes time: the shaft opens. The past and present exist in the same moment, and we know, as beings, that we are connected. All the people who lived before us, all who will come after us, are connected in this moment.

When we meet a work of art, there's something about that encounter that isn't fixed in time, but rather, it unfixes time: the shaft opens. The past and present exist in the same moment, and we know, as beings, that we are connected. All the people who lived before us, all who will come after us, are connected in this moment.


Ali Smith  Ali Smith
Tags: Work  Time  Art  Moment  Past  People   

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Author introduction

Ali Smith CBE FRSL (born 24 August 1962) is a Scottish author, playwright, academic and journalist. Sebastian Barry described her in 2016 as "Scotland's Nobel laureate-in-waiting".[1]

Quotes from the same author


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We'd never expect to understand a piece of music on one listen, but we tend to believe we've read a book after reading it just once.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Music Reading Book Believe Listen
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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.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Great Invisible More Two Narrative
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Nothing is harmful to literature except censorship, and that almost never stops literature going where it wants to go either, because literature has a way of surpassing everything that blocks it and growing stronger for the exercise.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Stronger Literature Exercise Growing
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The rhythmical unit of the syllable is at the back of all of it - the word, the phrase, the sentence, the syntax, the paragraph, and the way the heart moves when you read it.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Heart You Way Back Paragraph Word
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People tend to see modernism as the opposite of a celebration. They see it as a fracturing and an art built round an absence, but it's really a celebration of our existence.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Art People Celebration Existence See
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I'm blessed in my good friends, and some of them happen to be writers, though that's almost never what our friendships are about. And every writer I've ever read, living or dead, has in one way or another helped and inspired. I have a feeling it's important not to mix the two up.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Good Blessed Friends Good Friends
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Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Great Space Words You Like Move
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When we meet a work of art, there's something about that encounter that isn't fixed in time, but rather, it unfixes time: the shaft opens. The past and present exist in the same moment, and we know, as beings, that we are connected. All the people who lived before us, all who will come after us, are connected in this moment.

    Ali Smith  Ali Smith   
 Tags: Work Time Art Moment Past People
 Topics:
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