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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
Even
Results
Thing
Living
Horrific
Think
Write
Anytime
Thinking
Another
Disguise
People
Persons
Violent
Person
Close
Done
Wouldn
Writing
Fiction

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.
Zadie Smith
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I know a lot of people who read and think: George [Saunders] is so much fun. There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.
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But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
Zadie Smith
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I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
Zadie Smith
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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.
Zadie Smith
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
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I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
Zadie Smith
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Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.
Zadie Smith
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Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
Zadie Smith
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
Zadie Smith
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You're a library of me.
Zadie Smith
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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.
Zadie Smith
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
Zadie Smith
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But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
Zadie Smith
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I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death. Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.
Zadie Smith
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It was a kiss from the past.
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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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
Zadie Smith
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And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.
Zadie Smith