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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Society
Retain
Family
Beard
Past
Fake
Women
Generally
Back
Ancient
Unhook
Men
Leave
Discreetly
Like
Changed
Unrecognizable
Ability
Removing

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Time is how you spend your love.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
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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.
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It was a kiss from the past.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
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It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants - packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends - the stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.
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I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.
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I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.
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In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
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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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Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.
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I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
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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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Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
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He traced the genealogy of the feeling.
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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.
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