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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Never
Imprecise
Impractical
Final
Finals
Desire

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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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 love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. Im too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because they are repeated in so many exploitative contexts - adverts and TV shows and political speeches.
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It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.
Zadie Smith
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She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
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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Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
Zadie Smith
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Don't confuse honours with achievement.
Zadie Smith
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It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
Zadie Smith
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Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?
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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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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.
Zadie Smith
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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
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Revelation is where all crazy people end up. It's the last stop on the nutso express.
Zadie Smith
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The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
Zadie Smith
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
Zadie Smith
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I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.
Zadie Smith