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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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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Sometimes
Life
Illusion
Resources
Ones
Wants
Making
More quotes by Zadie Smith
I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always try to make the argument from the perspective of personal pleasure.
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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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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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You're a library of me.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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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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Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.
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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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Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?
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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
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail.
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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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It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
Zadie Smith
She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
Zadie Smith
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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Time is how you spend your love.
Zadie Smith
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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It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
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