Ali Smith Quotes

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

What moves me most is style: the quality of the writing rather than the story being told.

No matter how wonderful the story, it has to move on something, and that is language. The words that I use, the pace, the rhythm and cadences all need to be there. If they're not there, the story is like a boat that just sits there and doesn't move on the ocean.

These days, I like to think of sentences as workers. Only one of their jobs is to look and sound good. Sentences are the carriers of plot. They're the conjurers of images, the conveyors of tone and meaning and voice. The best sentences surprise us.

I'm the kind of writer who thinks style is just as important as the story being told.

It's good for a story to have a strong style.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

All my stories are webs of style and none seems at first blush to contain much kinetic matter. For me style is matter.

When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.

My favorite writers have been those who've said things well.

I'm a writer. I just love telling stories.

If I remember correctly, a writer is someone who wants to convey information. Language or writing is a code.

In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.

Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.

That's always the most productive research - research into tone, into voice. Facts are nice, too, but facts are more raw material than creative inspiration.

The thing about good writing is it has a music to it.

I think the most important thing when you're telling a story is to just tell the story as best as you possibly can.

Read and write with a sensitive ear. The craft of writing is very important. Practice the craft.

In the best fiction, the language itself can become almost invisible.

To write you have to be able to know how to put words together.

Prose is all about embellishing and describing.

I think the reason my stories have been so successful is that I have a strong sense of metaphor.

The books I love most are the ones that combine some sort of gripping story with really beautiful or stylish writing. Some of my favorites are 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy, 'The Virgin Suicides' by Jeffrey Eugenides, 'The Interpreter of Maladies' by Jhumpa Lahiri, and 'Blindness' by Jose Saramago.

Each author has his or her own voice. I read each book slowly so I can see the patterns they use to spread out the garden of earthly delights.

Storytelling and elegant style don't always go hand in hand.