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Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Anymore
Alone
Family
Everyone
Doesn
Work
Would
Jerome
Like
Miserable

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.
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You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
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English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
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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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I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
Zadie Smith
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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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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.
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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
Zadie Smith
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English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
Zadie Smith
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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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I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.
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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.
Zadie Smith
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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
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Zadie Smith
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When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.
Zadie Smith
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Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Zadie Smith
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
Zadie Smith
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
Zadie Smith
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
Zadie Smith