The Accidental Quotes

“There are things that can't be said, because it's hard to have to know them.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“Oh. To be filled with goodness then shattered by goodness, so beautifully mosaically fragmented by such shocking goodness.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“But fiction has the unique power of revealing something true.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“She had entered him like he was water. Like he was a dictionary and she was a word he hadn't known was in him. Or she had entered him more simply, like he was a door and she opened him, leaving him standing ajar as she walked straight in.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“Above the keyhole the door has a latch. It is pretending to be an authentic old latch. The door is pretending to be an authentic old door. Maybe everything there is isn't authentic any more. Maybe everything there is is a kind of pretending.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“The beginning of things – when is it exactly? Astrid Smart wants to know. (Astrid Smart. Astrid
Berenski. Astrid Smart. Astrid Berenski.) 5.04 a.m. on the substandard clock radio.
Because why do people always say the day starts now? Really it starts in the middle of
the night at a fraction of a second past midnight. But it’s not supposed to have begun
until the dawn, really the dark is still last night and it isn’t morning till the light,
though actually it was morning as soon as it was even a fraction of a second past
twelve i.e.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“She was living in a time when historically it was permissible to smile like that above the face of someone who had died a violent death.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“He had seemed a man with whom the right kind of dialogue would be possible.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“It was just that the literal meaning itself wasn´t immediately comprehensible. That doesn´t mean it didn´t mean.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“He was clearly in love with Amber too, and this time it wasn't the usual water off the back of the duck. Instead, the duck, wounded by a hunter and bewildered because half its head had been shot way, and was still tottering about on its webby feet by the side of the pond. From the one side it looked like a duck usually looks. From the other, it was a different story.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“Believe me. Everything is meant.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“Got a light? See? Careful. I'm everything you ever dreamed.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“Deeply exciting, though, cliché was, as a concept. It was truth misted by overexpression, wasn't it, like a structure seen in a fog, something waiting to be re-felt, re-seen. Something dainty fumbled at through thick gloves. Cliché was true, obviously, which was why it had become cliché in the first place; so true that cliché actually protected you from its own truth by being what it was, nothing but cliché.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“She knew it was supposed to happen like that, that although these photographs were a signal to the eyes about something really happening, the more she looked at them the less she felt or thought. The more pictures she saw, the less they meant something that had happened to real people and the more it became possible to pile real people up like that again anywhere you wanted and have your picture taken standing smiling behind them.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental

“She was so adolescent. Everything about her asked for attention, the way she walked across a room or a shop or across the forecourt of a petrol station, leaning into the air in front of her as if about to lose her balance, mutely demanding that someone – Eve, who else? – put out the flat of her hand and let Astrid push her forehead or her shoulder into it.”
― Ali Smith, The Accidental