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

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Holding
Ideal
Ideals
Meant
Reader
Writer
Sleep
Cannot

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.
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A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
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Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.
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The young people have a phrase for this now, which is slay in your lane. That's a very important principle of writing. You have to work out what it is you can't do, obscure it, and focus on what works.
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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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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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No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Zadie Smith
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I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.
Zadie Smith
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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'?
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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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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.
Zadie Smith
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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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You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
Zadie Smith
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This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
Zadie Smith
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Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
Zadie Smith
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I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.
Zadie Smith