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I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Flats
Copies
Books
House
Keep
Around
Book
Mum
Like
Flat

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
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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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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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The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
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For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
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I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.
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In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
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Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
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It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.
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A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18. It gets harder the older you get, as you make different life choices, as people say in America. A lot of women's friendships begin to founder.
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Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.
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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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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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You're a library of me.
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When I was 13, I really used to skip down the street, happy in thinking, Oh, well, someone's suffering pain in order for me to feel this pleasure.
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To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.
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Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase at the end of the day--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamental
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Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
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