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…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

Zadie Smith

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
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
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
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
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
ZADIE SMITH

Interesting People Political
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
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
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
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
Time is how you spend your love.
ZADIE SMITH

Emotion Express Feeling Love Spend
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
ZADIE SMITH

Country Love Lying People
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don’t join fashionable ‘schools of thought.’ Read everything.
ZADIE SMITH

Fashionable Lubricant School
You can feel bad… I mean, that’s not illegal.
ZADIE SMITH

Bad Feel Illegal Mean
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
ZADIE SMITH

Belief Fun Heterosexuality

…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

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…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.

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