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Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Survived
Sentence
Sentences
Friendship
Difficult
Order
Must
Every

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.
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It was a kiss from the past.
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When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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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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...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
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You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
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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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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.
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A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been writing about that subject for a while.
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All tastes are expressions of belief.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
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The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.
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It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.
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