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Time is how you spend your love.

Zadie Smith

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
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.
ZADIE SMITH

Out People Work Writing
Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
ZADIE SMITH

Achievement Confuse Honour
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
ZADIE SMITH

Action Alternatives Lack
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
ZADIE SMITH

Coverage Emotion Full Honesty Story
One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it’s always smarter than you are.
ZADIE SMITH

Form Novel Smarter
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
ZADIE SMITH

Fashionable Lubricant School
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
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
…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
ZADIE SMITH

Lose Shadow Teeth White
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
Time is how you spend your love.
ZADIE SMITH

Emotion Express Feeling Love Spend
I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
ZADIE SMITH

Author Define Dictionary Sole
You’re a library of me.
ZADIE SMITH

Attention Express Feeling Library

Time is how you spend your love.

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Time is how you spend your love.

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