Quote

I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

Zadie Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Needs
Either
Urgency
Writing
Quite
Luxury
Going
Read
Realized
Every
Write
Otherwise
Years
Two
Early
Really
Need
Unless
Think
Feel
Type
Thinking
Feels
Novel

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
Zadie Smith
Image
A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
Zadie Smith
Image
When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Zadie Smith
Image
We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
Zadie Smith
Image
The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
Zadie Smith
Image
It was a kiss from the past.
Zadie Smith
Image
An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
Zadie Smith
Image
The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
Zadie Smith
Image
Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.
Zadie Smith
Image
I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.
Zadie Smith
Image
I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
Zadie Smith
Image
It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
Zadie Smith
Image
For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
Zadie Smith
Image
For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.
Zadie Smith
Image
He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
Zadie Smith
Image
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
Zadie Smith