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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.

Zadie Smith

You can feel bad… I mean, that’s not illegal.
ZADIE SMITH

Bad Feel Illegal Mean
…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
ZADIE SMITH

Lose Shadow Teeth White
Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
ZADIE SMITH

Achievement Confuse Honour
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
ZADIE SMITH

Fashionable Lubricant School
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
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
ZADIE SMITH

Novel Pain Problem
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
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.
ZADIE SMITH

Ghost Risk Sublime
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.
ZADIE SMITH

Incredible Luxury World Writing
Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
ZADIE SMITH

Book People Reading
Time is how you spend your love.
ZADIE SMITH

Emotion Express Feeling Love Spend
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
ZADIE SMITH

Belief Fun Heterosexuality
Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
ZADIE SMITH

Rarely Squirrels Tremble
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 library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
ZADIE SMITH

Absolutely Essential Library
One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it’s always smarter than you are.
ZADIE SMITH

Form Novel Smarter

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Zadie Smith Quotes