Ali Smith

How many worlds can you hold in a hand.

In a handful of sand.

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.