Quote

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Satisfied
Hand
Comes
Whichever
Tell
Resign
Hands
Veil
Truth
Veils
Writing
Lifelong
Never
Sadness

More quotes by 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.
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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I have a natural tendency to feel well about the world, I suppose, one way or another. But then there is the problem of pain. There are things like [Abraham] Lincoln's beloved little boy dying.
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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
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It was a kiss from the past.
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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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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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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It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
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The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
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It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.' Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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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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It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
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She loved you in the morning because the day was new.
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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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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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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.
Zadie Smith
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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
Zadie Smith