Quote

They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.

Zadie Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Needs
Grow
Sibling
Even
Grows
Gaps
Years
Year
Weed
Like
Five
Allows
Attention
Apart
Age
Garden
Three
Constant
Siblings
Nothing
Months
Weeds

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
Zadie Smith
Image
Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
Zadie Smith
Image
An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
Zadie Smith
Image
Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.
Zadie Smith
Image
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
Zadie Smith
Image
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Zadie Smith
Image
Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
Zadie Smith
Image
Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
Zadie Smith
Image
The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.
Zadie Smith
Image
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
Zadie Smith
Image
13.5 Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan's academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.
Zadie Smith
Image
The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
Zadie Smith
Image
Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
Zadie Smith
Image
Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.
Zadie Smith
Image
The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Zadie Smith