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Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Matter
Lying
Birthplace
Giving
Idea
Belonging
Thing
Seems
Accident
Long
Doe
Accidents
Believe
Give
Dirty
Like
Anything
Suddenly
Ideas
Begin
Everything
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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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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 don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
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One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.
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Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.
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And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.
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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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I know a lot of people who read and think: George [Saunders] is so much fun. There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.
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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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The arena of women's lives is somewhat more intimate. If a woman goes out with an incredibly attractive man and they break up, that woman is not more attractive to men. It's completely irrelevant to them. That's an example of the way women's minds work.
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People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
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Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
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The nineties, ecstatic decade!
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Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
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I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.
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