Alexis M. Smith > Quotes

“It's a strange product of infatuation, she thinks. To want to tell someone about mundane things. The awareness of another person suddenly sharpens your senses, so that the little things come into focus and the world seems more beautiful and complicated.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Monotonous and thankless as her job can be sometimes, she cheers at the thought of her coworkers - a dozen of them crammed into their little offices in the basement - all cleverly disguised as harmless geeks, all capable of saving the world if called upon.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Dear L--
Fell asleep in a park. Started to rain. Woke up with my hat full of leaves. You are all I see when I open or close a book.

Yours,
M”
― Alexis M. Smith

“We do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“It’s never the wedding dresses, you know. We keep those, too, but only because they’re so blooming expensive. No. I’ve seen enough old ladies’ closets to know what we really hold on to. Not the till-death-do-us-part dresses. It’s those first lovely dresses: the slow dance dresses, the good-night-kiss dresses. It’s those first pangs we hold on to.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Her sister read that spiders have book lungs, which fold in and out over themselves like pages. This pleased Isabel immensely. When she learned later that humans do not also have book lungs, she was disappointed. Book lungs. It made complete sense to her. This way breath, this way life: through here.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Before Isabel could read, she loved books.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“There's not a thing in the world that will not change, including you.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“He went on, but I tuned him out. I made eye contact and nodded occasionally, but I didn’t hear what he was saying. I had heard it all before. Even men who should’ve known better–overeducated progressive types who probably considered themselves feminists–had no compunction explaining things to me.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“There are treasures everywhere...it's a treasure if you love it. It doesn't matter how much it costs, or whether anyone else wants it. If you love it, you will treasure it.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“She wants him to want to be looking at her.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“When I let go of my own work, my own priorities, I lost the qualities he had been attracted to in the first place. That's how he put it. He loved the woman I was before I was in love with him.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“The early morning sunlight warms a patch of linoleum, and she lets her feet bathe in it while the kettle heats on the stove.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“They read. The sounds of paper between them as they turn and crease and carefully avoid touching each other.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Isabel turns down Oak toward the little vintage shop at Fourth Avenue, thinking of lunch—the Chinese place in Old Town, casting around inside herself for hunger, imagining the tastes of things.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“your knight in shining aroumor may just be an idiot in tin-foil.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Alphabetia, The Wacky Witch

“So much of our thinking is involved with things we’ve already done and things we have yet to do. It’s almost impossible not to be thinking about some future moment or some past mistake or tragedy.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“You've been here before, Bell. Remember the stories you told me about wandering in the woods when you were a little girl? It scared the crap out of you, but you went out there all alone, knee-high to a bunny rabbit, and picked berries and climbed trees and found bird nests and came home all bug-bitten and mossy. And you loved every minute of it. It made you our beautiful Arctic Bell, impervious to cold and feared by mosquitoes. Aren't you glad you didn't stay by grandma's side, darning socks and baking gingerbread?

Who darns socks?

Girls nobody tells stories about.”
― Alexis M. Smith

“A fire needs three things: a dry bed, fuel, and room to breathe.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“They are in the middle of the sidewalk, face to face, between a tobacco shop and a trash can. Everything they’ve never said flows into the narrow space between them.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“The animals know what’s coming before we do; they heed the instinct to flee. But we humans, even when we know what’s coming, we do nothing. We watch the animals disappear.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“Believe me when I tell you that everything is temporary. Everything. There's not a thing in the world that will not change, including you.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“The woman seems ready to be pleased with the world.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Well, he began, since we're talking about books, there is a book in my story.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“Ignorance is God's greatest gift to us, she said. Oh, you would say, but we have learned so much on this earth that is of use, that sustains those who come after us. And yes, I concur! It is the ignorance of what it beyond this moment that I'm thinking of. We only know what has come before and what is not, but not what is to come, and that, that ignorance it is a gift.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Marrow Island

“All these things tell a story, but is it hers? It has always been more than an aesthetic choice, holding on to the past; it's a kind of mourning for the things that do not last.

We do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive.

She thinks of the photograph of the eleven-year-old girl, standing under a glacier, saying goodbye.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“All these things tell a story, but is it hers? It has always been more than an aesthetic choice, holding on to the past; it's a kind of mourning for the things that do not last.

We do not last, she thinks. In the end, only the stories survive.

She thinks of the photograph of the eleven-year-old girl, standing under a glacier, saying goodbye.”
― Alexis M. Smith