Thomas Teal, a luminous translator of Jansson's twin talent for surface and depth, simplicity and reverberation in language, and someone who knows exactly how to convey her gift for sensing the meaning embedded in the most mundane act or turn of phrase.

Ali Smith

Categorized in : Depth Phrases Simplicity

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.

invisible narrative two

$Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before i... by Ali Smith$

Happy is what you realize you are a fraction of a second before it's too late.

fractions realizing too-late

Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be r... by Ali Smith

Do you come to art to be comforted, or do you come to art to be re-skinned?

art

To be known so well by someone is an unimaginable gift. But to be imagined so well by someone is even better.

unimaginable known wells

Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down. by Ali Smith

Stella Duffy is a writer who never lets you down.

stella

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.

reading believe book

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.

insightful stories joy

Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.

mean book moving

Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness.

filled shattered goodness

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

argument proof book

Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen. by Ali Smith

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

happens way art

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.

scotland mother father

There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to... by Ali Smith

There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.

hard knows said

Fashion is fickle, and I was published because I was fashionable.... by Ali Smith

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

fickle fashion gay

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.

growing-up brother years

We all know our dates of birth but . . . every year there is another date that we pass over without knowing what it is but it is just as important it is the other date the death date.

important knowing years

I had a job, I got ill, I left the job to get better, and while I was getting better, I wrote some stories. I sent them to some publishers and the fifth one who replied said they'd take them. Then they went bankrupt. Then that bankrupt publisher got bought by a bigger firm. Story: in the end is the beginning, and in the beginning is the end.

get-better stories jobs

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in. by Ali Smith

I went to the top of Vesuvius and looked in.

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.

dust would-be running

What shop did this book come from? she asked. Her father was looking worried at the cooker. He always got rice wrong. I don't know, Brooksie, he said, I don't remember. That was unimaginable, not remembering where a book has come from! and where it was bought from! That was part of the whole history, the whole point, of any book that you owned! And when you picked it up later in the house at home, you knew, you just knew by looking and having it in your hand, where it came from and where you got it and when and why you'd decided to buy it.

home father book