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I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Like
Books
Feeling
Easy
Sense
Feelings
Give
Implicated
Book
Discomfort
Giving
Ride

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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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Those beliefs about the essential goodness or beauty of the world are fundamentally paper-thin bullshit. There's not an essential belief that isn't a contingent belief. It could all be destroyed in a second, at any second. And I have an issue with that.
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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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First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
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It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.
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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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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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The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
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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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When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.
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This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
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To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.
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It's got two aspects. The bit that involves the public life I could not really tolerate and cannot really tolerate. I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.
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Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.
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