Quote

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.

Zadie Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
People
Space
Write
Away
Keep
Important
Writing
Even
Protect
Time
Everybody

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
Zadie Smith
Image
Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
Zadie Smith
Image
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Zadie Smith
Image
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
Zadie Smith
Image
The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
Image
The arena of women's lives is somewhat more intimate. If a woman goes out with an incredibly attractive man and they break up, that woman is not more attractive to men. It's completely irrelevant to them. That's an example of the way women's minds work.
Zadie Smith
Image
Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?
Zadie Smith
Image
It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.
Zadie Smith
Image
In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
Zadie Smith
Image
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
Zadie Smith
Image
The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.
Zadie Smith
Image
She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
Zadie Smith
Image
It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
Zadie Smith
Image
I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.
Zadie Smith
Image
Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.
Zadie Smith
Image
I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
Zadie Smith
Image
Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
Zadie Smith