The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
ZADIE SMITH…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
More Zadie Smith Quotes
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Time is how you spend your love.
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You’re a library of me.
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
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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.
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Full stories are as rare as honesty.
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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.
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Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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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.
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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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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.
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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.
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I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.
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I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
ZADIE SMITH