Dominic Smith Quotes & Sayings

We're conduits for the universe's desire to think about itself. — Dominic Smith

Her dissertation on Dutch women painters of the Golden Age sits unfinished in her apartment, a half-typed sheet of paper mildewing in the mouth of a Remington. It's been months since she worked on it and she sometimes finds herself staring at the machine's bullnose profile or the chrome-plated carriage return, thinking: Remington also makes rifles. — Dominic Smith

They covered their walls with beautiful paintings for the same reason they drank - to distract themselves from the abyss. — Dominic Smith

When he thought I was ready, my father inducted me into the quantum universe. It seemed to contradict all the science I had learned so far: nothing was really held in place. The essential stuff of the universe was nonmatter, pulses of energy and information, flickering in and out of existence. Everything was up for grabs. A table, a chair was a fluid arrangement of probabilities. Sometimes I expected the uncertainty principle to kick in and find strangers masquerading as my parents, or that our house had been razed by some great atomic upheaval. It was about this time I started sleeping with the light on. MANY — Dominic Smith

Nothing in the world is more sinister than a child's coffin. — Dominic Smith

You outlive your wife, then your colleagues and friends, then your accountant and the building doorman. ou no longer attend the opera, because the human bladder can only endure so much. Social engagements require strategy and hearing aid calibrations. pg 269 — Dominic Smith

The forger was too exacting, too superficial. Only the real artist has the false beginning. — Dominic Smith

daughter's death had loosed something in Sara, a savage kind of grief that burned onto the canvas. — Dominic Smith

She looks out the window and notices the sections of Cleveland Street gone to rot, the filigreed metal balconies of the shambling terraces like rusted lacework, the grimy tiled pub facades, the windows of the Lebanese restaurants filmed with grease. This is old Sydney, her father's town of grit and mildew. The — Dominic Smith

There are pockets of time, she thinks, where every sense rings like a bell, where the world brims with fleeting grace. — Dominic Smith

The past is more alive to her than the present, she realizes, and the thought is suffocating. — Dominic Smith

Love is not like choosing a partner for whist. It has a life of its own. our duty is merely to follow its call. — Dominic Smith

But what can be learned from trivia? A history of inventions reveals we made the gun silencer (1908) before air conditioning (1911), the kaleidoscope (1817) before Braille printing (1829), cocaine (1860) before penicillin (1929). It's a story about pleasure before usefulness, about ingenuity in killing before improving our everyday lives."
The Beautiful Miscellaneous, — Dominic Smith

She has no interest in the composition from ten or twenty feet - that will come later. What she wants is topography, the impasto, the furrows where sable hairs were dragged into tiny painted crests to catch the light. Or the stray line of charcoal or chalk, glimpsed beneath a glaze that's three hundred years old. She's been known to take a safety pin and test the porosity of the paint and then bring the point to her tongue. Since old-world grounds contain gesso, glue, and something edible - honey, milk, cheese - the Golden Age has a distinctively sweet or curdled taste. She is always careful to avoid the leads and the cobalts. What — Dominic Smith

Couldn't decades of eating the best foods, taking the best vacations, and sleeping in the finest beds prevent the slumping of the frame and the spackling of the skin? — Dominic Smith

Every morning I stand here and watch the sun gild the trees and the grottoes. It's like drawing a breath before the day begins in earnest. — Dominic Smith

The lights have been dimmed and the window is awash in the blackness and he can see a hairline fracture of dawn against the horizon. — Dominic Smith

The body thinks it's real. That's the problem of modern physics. How to convince our minds that they're not our own. — Dominic Smith

Old age is having the name of a chiropractor in your wallet. It's cutting out coupons for the zeal of discounted small items and the practice of fine motor skills. — Dominic Smith

But everything is how it should be. How's that for wisdom? — Dominic Smith

The sonic world of the foyer and vestibule comes at him distorted and from a distance, as if someone's moving furniture underwater. — Dominic Smith

It's the look you give a well-behaved imbecile, an insurance policy against cosmic malevolence. — Dominic Smith

Can you create a vacuum out of a human life? A state where everything's possible but nothing very likely? Does something new emerge when there's no more empty space? — Dominic Smith

Her youthful habit of consuming a picture just inches from its aromatic surface died a long time ago. Sebastian, when they were first dating, had once called it an affectation and she could never bring herself to do it again. His offhanded comment should have been a sign of future cruelties and standards of perfection, but instead she'd quickly agreed with his assessment and was grateful for his candor. She — Dominic Smith

You say love's so important, but how can you prove it?
Love is like soap, it works if you use it. — Dominic Smith

It took him years to realize it was the flirtation and admiration he craved, not the actual conquest. — Dominic Smith

Poverty appeared first in their meals, then in their shoes, and finally in their thoughts and prayers. Still, — Dominic Smith

The past and the present coagulate into something that makes sense to him. — Dominic Smith