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It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Intimate
Begins
Either
Difficult
Tell
Truth
Banal
Book
Presented
People
Wholly

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Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
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I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.
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The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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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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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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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.
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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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Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
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The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.
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For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.
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It's got two aspects. The bit that involves the public life I could not really tolerate and cannot really tolerate. I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.
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An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
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I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
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