Quote

Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Like
Corners
Penthouse
Despite
Penthouses
Somehow
Suite
Artists
Occupying
Artist
Fictional
Reality
Insist
Stills
Rapper
Still
Corner

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There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
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I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.
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Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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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.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
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I know a lot of people who read and think: George [Saunders] is so much fun. There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.
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My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
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I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.
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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
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English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
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An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
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... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.
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I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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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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