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.
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.
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 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)
![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)
