Autumn (Seasonal, #1)

by Ali Smith

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.

I’m tired of the news. I’m tired of the way it makes things spectacular that aren’t, and deals so simplistically with what’s truly appalling. I’m tired of the vitriol. I’m tired of the anger. I’m tired of the meanness. I’m tired of the selfishness. I’m tired of how we’re doing nothing to stop it.

I’m tired of liars. I’m tired of sanctified liars. I’m tired of how those liars have let this happen. I’m tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose. I’m tired of lying governments. I’m tired of people not caring whether they’re being lied to any more. I’m tired of being made to feel this fearful. I’m tired of animosity. I’m tired of pusillanimosity.

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.

Words are themselves organisms, Daniel said.

The woman he’s pretty much sure he loves more than anyone he’s ever, the woman he will pine away to nothing without the love of, is twenty years younger than him,

It is like democracy is a bottle someone can threaten to smash and do a bit of damage with. It has become a time of people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually ever becoming dialogue. It is the end of dialogue.