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It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Women
Bodies
Home
Seemed
Body
Shoes
Every
Hatred
Seeped
Way
Brought
Draught
People
Air
Breathed
Control
Feminism
House
Newspapers

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.
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Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
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You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.
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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
Zadie Smith
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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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.
Zadie Smith
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You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.
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The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
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I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.
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For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.
Zadie Smith
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
Zadie Smith