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I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Idea
Inconceivable
Away
Exile
Home
Attracted
Ideas
Length
Time
Particularly
Exactly
Serious
Literature
Nabokov

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The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?
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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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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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Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
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The young people have a phrase for this now, which is slay in your lane. That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.
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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
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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.
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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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Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?
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I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
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She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
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(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
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It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.
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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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