Quote

You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Things
Stories
Appear
Become
Pages
Find
Begin
Human
Beings
Humans
Short
Real
Approach
Cautiously
Different
Writer
Insightful
Always
Story
Represent

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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
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The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise.
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Time is how you spend your love.
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I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
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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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The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.
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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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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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In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
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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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My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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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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She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
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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.
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