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I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
People
Persons
Violent
Person
Close
Done
Wouldn
Writing
Fiction
Even
Results
Thing
Living
Horrific
Think
Write
Anytime
Thinking
Another
Disguise

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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
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There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
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I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
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I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.
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She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
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The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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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.
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Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.
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The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.
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It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants - packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends - the stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.
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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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The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.
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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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Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.
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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.
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