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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
Book
Presented
People
Wholly
Intimate
Begins
Either
Difficult
Tell
Truth
Banal

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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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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 very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
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Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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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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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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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
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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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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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Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.
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Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?
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I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
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He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
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For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
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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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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
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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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