Quote

The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

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
Sleep
Cannot
Holding
Ideal
Ideals
Meant
Reader
Writer

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.
Zadie Smith
Image
It's got two aspects. The bit that involves the public life I could not really tolerate and cannot really tolerate. I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.
Zadie Smith
Image
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
Zadie Smith
Image
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Zadie Smith
Image
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
Image
He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
Zadie Smith
Image
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
Zadie Smith
Image
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
Zadie Smith
Image
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
Zadie Smith
Image
Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?
Zadie Smith
Image
You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
Zadie Smith
Image
Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
Zadie Smith
Image
She represents love, beauty, purity, the ideal female and the moon...and she's the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord, AND, on the other hand, of love, perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune.
Zadie Smith
Image
'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
Zadie Smith
Image
It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
Zadie Smith
Image
She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
Zadie Smith