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Work on a computer that is disconnected from the ­internet.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Disconnected
Computer
Internet
Work

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.
Zadie Smith
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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
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The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.
Zadie Smith
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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
Zadie Smith
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First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
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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I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.
Zadie Smith
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Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.
Zadie Smith
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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
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It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.
Zadie Smith
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An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
Zadie Smith
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
Zadie Smith
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
Zadie Smith
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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
Zadie Smith
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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
Zadie Smith
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Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.
Zadie Smith
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I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.
Zadie Smith
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
Zadie Smith
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To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.
Zadie Smith
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Those beliefs about the essential goodness or beauty of the world are fundamentally paper-thin bullshit. There's not an essential belief that isn't a contingent belief. It could all be destroyed in a second, at any second. And I have an issue with that.
Zadie Smith