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Words are like untying a corset - you can move into this great space with them.

You never know if you're a writer. You can't trust it. If you woke up and said, 'I'm a writer,' it would be gone. You wouldn't see anything for miles - even the dust would be running away.

From Ali Smith

I was at the tail end of the family. The next brother along was already seven years older than me. I remember growing up by myself, playing games by myself.

From Ali Smith

Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable. Because I was gay.

From Ali Smith

A good argument, like a good dialogue, is always a proof of life, but I'd much rather go and read a book.

From Ali Smith

But everything written has style. The list of ingredients on the side of a cornflakes box has style. And everything literary has literary style. And style is integral to a work. How something is told correlates with - more - makes what's being told. A story is its style.

From Ali Smith

All we need to do, reader or writer, from first line to final page, is be as open as a book, and be alive to the life in language - on all its levels.

From Ali Smith

My father is from Newark in Nottinghamshire and my mother is from the very north of Ireland. They've ended up in Scotland, where my father - well, both of them - will always be seen as having come from somewhere else.

From Ali Smith

A game one of my sisters will play with me in my first year of being alive is called Good Baby, Bad Baby. This consists of being told I am a good baby until I smile and laugh, then being told I am a bad baby until I burst into tears. This training will stand me in good stead all through my life.

From Ali Smith

It's the word 'artful'; it's such a great word, with its dark and its light side, its art and its cunning, the craft and the crafty of it - I've been preoccupied with the word 'artful' and the twin notions of 'cornucopia' and 'pickpocket' it suggests for quite some time.

From Ali Smith

Ali Smith

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