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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Something
Ridding
Like
Retrieve
Boiling
Gained
Salt
Oneself
Faith
Lost

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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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Where I come from, said Archie, a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her. Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean, said Samad tersely, that it is a good idea.
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All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.
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Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.
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Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
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People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.
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An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
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First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
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The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.
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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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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
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Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.
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As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.
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…maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith
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It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.' Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.
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But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
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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.
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Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.
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