Home > Work > The First Person and Other Stories
1 " The novel, he was saying, was a flabby old whore. A flabby old whore! the older man said looking delighted. She was serviceable, roomy, warm and familiar, the younger was saying, but really a bit used up, really a bit too slack and loose. Slack and loose! the older said laughing. Whereas the short story, by comparison, was a nimble goddess, a slim nymph. Because so few people had mastered the short story she was still in very good shape. ...I idly wondered how many of the books in my house were fuckable and how good they'd be in bed. "
― Ali Smith , The First Person and Other Stories
2 " The third person is another pair of eyes. The third person is a presentiment of God. ...... a way to tell the story. It's a box for the endless music that's there between people, waiting to be played. "
3 " All short stories long. "
4 " You're not the first person who was ever wounded by love. You're not the first person who ever knocked on my door. You're not the first person I ever chanced my arm with. You're not the first person I ever tried to impress with my brilliant performance of not really being impressed with anything. You're not the first person to make me laugh. You're not the first person I ever made laugh. You're not the first person full stop. But you're the one right now. I'm the one right now. That's enough, yes? "
5 " You hold me very tight in under my clothes, and if there's a library anywhere near then someone just removed its roof, the shelves just flooded with the sun and all the old books just remembered what it means to be bound in skin and to have a spine. "
6 " I love your kiss. Everything’s sorted, and obvious, and understood, and civilised, your kiss says. It’s a shut-eye lie, I know it is, because the music I didn’t know before I knew you makes me open my eyes in a place of no sentimentality, where light itself is a kind of shadow, where everything is fragment-slanted. "
