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Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Various
Ways
Wrong
Writing
Way
Eliminating
Headed
Thereby
Expressing

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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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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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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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.
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I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.
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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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Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale.
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Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
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I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
Zadie Smith
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
Zadie Smith
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Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.
Zadie Smith
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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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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
Zadie Smith
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I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.
Zadie Smith
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It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.
Zadie Smith
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I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always try to make the argument from the perspective of personal pleasure.
Zadie Smith
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People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
Zadie Smith
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
Zadie Smith