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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.

Zadie Smith

You’re a library of me.
ZADIE SMITH

Attention Express Feeling Library
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
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
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
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.
ZADIE SMITH

Book People Reveal Tell Truth
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
ZADIE SMITH

Action Alternatives Lack
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
ZADIE SMITH

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

Fashionable Lubricant School
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
ZADIE SMITH

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

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

Absolutely Essential Library
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
ZADIE SMITH

Edit Secret Simple
…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
ZADIE SMITH

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

Bad Feel Illegal Mean

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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Popular Authors

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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Zadie Smith Quotes