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How to Be Both QUOTES

How to Be Both QUOTES

1 " It's so warm it's almost friendly. A friendly work of art. I've never thought such a thing in my life. And look at it. It's never sentimental. It's generous, but it's sardonic too. And whenever it's sardonic, a moment later it's generous again. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

2 " Because, George thought as she sat there with her eyes closed back before Christmas in Mrs Rock's self-consciously comfortable chair in the counselling office, how can it be that there's an advert on TV with dancing bananas unpeeling themselves in it and teabags doing a dance, and her mother will never see that advert?
How can that advert exist and her mother not exist in the world?
She didn't say it out loud, though, because there wasn't a point.
It isn't about saying.
It is about the hole which will form in the roof through which the cold will intensify and after which the structure of the house will begin to shift, like it ought, and through which George will be able to lie every night in bed watching the black sky. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

3 " 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. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

4 " One day instead the old woman said kind words to her and gave her an awning on a stick to keep rain off (there has been much rain in purgatorium) "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

5 " It is like everything in layers. Things happen right at the front of the pictures and at the same time they continue happening, both separately and connectedly, behind, and behind that, and again behind that, like you can see, in perspective, for miles. Then there are the separate details, like that man with the duck. They're all also happening on their own terms. The picture makes you look at both--the close-up happenings and the bigger picture. Looking at the man with the duck is like seeing how everyday and how almost comic cruelty is. The cruelty happens in among everything else happening. It is an amazing way to show how ordinary cruelty really is. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

6 " Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

7 " 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. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

8 " ... 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. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

9 " 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. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

10 " It was all : it was nothing : it was more than enough. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

11 " All we are is eyes looking for the unbroken or the edges where the broken bits might fit each other. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

12 " When you've nothing, at least you've all of it. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

13 " And which comes first? her unbearable mother is saying. What we see or how we see it? "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

14 " 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. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

15 " Finally she lets herself think about how it feels:
to be so frightened that you almost can't breathe
to speed so fast and be so completely out of control
to know the meaning of helplessness
to spin across a shining space knowing any moment you might end up hurt, but likewise, all the same, like plus wise you just might not. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

16 " Or perhaps it is just that George has spent proper time looking at this one painting and that every single experience of looking at something would be this good if she devoted time to everything she looked at. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

17 " How are you feeling? Mrs Rock said.
I'm okay, George said. I think it's because I don't think I am.
You're okay because you don't think you're okay? Mrs Rock said.
Feeling, George said. I think I'm okay because I don't think I'm feeling. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

18 " Imagine if you made something and then you always had to be seen through what you'd made, as if the thing you'd made became you. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

19 " beauty in its most completeness is never found in a single body but is something shared instead between more than one body. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both

20 " So always risk your skin, she said, and never fear losing it, cause it always does some good one way or another when the powers that be deign to take it off us. "

― Ali Smith , How to Be Both