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

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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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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Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
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It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.
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In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
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Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
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It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.
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Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase at the end of the day--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamental
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She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
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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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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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- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
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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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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.
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He traced the genealogy of the feeling.
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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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A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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