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If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Going
Make
Good
Cautious
Time
Mistakes
Mistake
Write
Book
Writing

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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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.
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
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It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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13.5 Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan's academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.
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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.
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The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
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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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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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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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It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.
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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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It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
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You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.
Zadie Smith
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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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Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.
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One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.
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