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.
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.
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.
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 Quote - For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/for-me-george-saunders-novel-lincoln-in-the-bardo-.jpg)
![Zadie Smith Quote - 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.](https://minimalistquotes.com/images/something-in-me-was-changed-by-lincoln-in-the-bard.jpg)
