Laura (Reading is a Doing Word)

“A tyrant runs a country. He does this via a lot of other people doing this tyrant's work for him. They do it partly because they think he'll kill them or their families if they don't, and partly because it makes them feel powerful too.
One of the things you're not allowed to say in this country is that the tyrant is a tyrant.”
― Ali Smith, Gliff

“Like there was such a thing as a family of words, one that stretched across different languages all touching on each other, hitting or striking each other, acting on each other, influencing each other, agreeing with each other or throwing each other out, disturbing each other, doing all of these things at once.”
― Ali Smith, Gliff

“I'm all my me's, she said. I am complete.”
― Ali Smith, Gliff

“Here is a situation: a country that is not fully a country, a nation that does not quite believe itself to be a nation, exists within, and as a small and distant part of, a greater state. The greater state was once a very great state, with its own empire. It is no longer great, but its leaders and many of its people like to believe it is. For the people of the less-than country, the not-quite nation, there are competing, conflicting loyalties. The are confused. For generations a kind of balance has been maintained. There has been give and take, and, yes, there have been arguments about how much give and how much take, but now something has changed. There is a sense of injustice, of neglect, of the real operation. Nobody is being shot, there are no political prisoners, there is very little censorship, but still that sense persists: this is wrong. It grows. It demands to be addressed. The situation needs to be fixed.”
― James Robertson, And the Land Lay Still