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I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

Zadie Smith

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 greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
ZADIE SMITH

Country Love Lying People
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
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
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
ZADIE SMITH

Action Alternatives Lack
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
Don’t confuse honours with achievement.
ZADIE SMITH

Achievement Confuse Honour
I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
ZADIE SMITH

Author Define Dictionary Sole
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
You’re a library of me.
ZADIE SMITH

Attention Express Feeling Library
You can feel bad… I mean, that’s not illegal.
ZADIE SMITH

Bad Feel Illegal Mean
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
Time is how you spend your love.
ZADIE SMITH

Emotion Express Feeling Love Spend
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
Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
ZADIE SMITH

Rarely Squirrels Tremble
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
ZADIE SMITH

Coverage Emotion Full Honesty Story

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

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I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.

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