Full stories are as rare as honesty.
ZADIE SMITHThe 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.
More Zadie Smith Quotes
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…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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Time is how you spend your love.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders’] ghosts was a part of it.
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
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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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Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
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You’re a library of me.
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Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
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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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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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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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One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it’s always smarter than you are.
ZADIE SMITH