One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it’s always smarter than you are.
ZADIE SMITHIt’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
More Zadie Smith Quotes
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Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
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…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn’t like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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The young people have a phrase for this now, which is “slay in your lane.” That’s a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can’t do, obscure it, and focus on what works.
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Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.
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I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
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Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
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Time is how you spend your love.
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It’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
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For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
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You can feel bad… I mean, that’s not illegal.
ZADIE SMITH