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All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Novel
Neural
Brain
Routes
Novels
Lying
Convince
Future
Attempt
True
Road
Lies
Cutting

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
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I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.
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As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.
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Full stories are as rare as honesty.
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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
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Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.
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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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In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
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I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
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Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
Zadie Smith
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I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
Zadie Smith
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
Zadie Smith
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
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It was a kiss from the past.
Zadie Smith
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Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.
Zadie Smith
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Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because they are repeated in so many exploitative contexts - adverts and TV shows and political speeches.
Zadie Smith
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All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
Zadie Smith