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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Zadie Smith

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
ZADIE SMITH

Author Define Dictionary Sole
I’m very attracted to exile literature – particularly Nabokov – exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.
ZADIE SMITH

Home Idea Literature
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
ZADIE SMITH

Edit Secret Simple
I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.
ZADIE SMITH

Idea Nostalgic Worry
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
ZADIE SMITH

Fashionable Lubricant School
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.
ZADIE SMITH

Intimate Writing Young
The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
ZADIE SMITH

Absolutely Essential Library
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
ZADIE SMITH

Coverage Emotion Full Honesty Story
Time is how you spend your love.
ZADIE SMITH

Emotion Express Feeling Love Spend
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
ZADIE SMITH

Action Alternatives Lack
Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
ZADIE SMITH

Achievement Confuse Honour
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
ZADIE SMITH

Novel Pain Problem
I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
ZADIE SMITH

Insight Novelist Political
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
ZADIE SMITH

Belief Fun Heterosexuality
…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
ZADIE SMITH

Lose Shadow Teeth White
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
ZADIE SMITH

Interesting People Political

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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