Ali Smith

“Forget it,” said Jonna. “Forget it. Don’t grieve for a net, grieve for everything else that’s broken and can’t ever be mended. Your uncle liked making nets; it was what he knew, it was calming and familiar. Going into that loft you’ve talked about. I’m sure it helped him shut everything out, and everyone. He wasn’t thinking about fish, not a bit, and not about you getting the net as a present. He was just at peace, doing work that was his and only his.

To feel even just the thought of one’s own bared self near someone else’s beauty

Regrets when you’re dead? A past when you’re dead? Is there never any escaping the junkshop of the self?

The lifelong friends, he said. We sometimes wait a lifetime for them

Always be reading something, he said. Even when we’re not physically reading. How else will we read the world? Think of it as a constant.

You will stop trusting me, and quite right, because I’d be a liar. We’ll all be lessened by the lie.

She liked doing melancholy things like that.

And whoever makes up the story makes up the world, Daniel said. So always try to welcome people into the home of your story. That’s my suggestion.

How does making things up welcome people? Elisabeth said.

What I’m suggesting, Daniel said, is, if you’re telling a story, always give your characters the same benefit of the doubt you’d welcome when it comes to yourself.

A great many men don’t understand a woman full of joy, even more don’t understand paintings full of joy by a woman.

Life? was what you worked to catch, the intense happiness of an object slightly set apart from you. Painting? was what you did, alone, and you sat there, and it was your own terrible fight or your own lovely bit, but it was really terribly alone.