Quote

And now the moment. Such a moment has a peculiar character. It is brief and temporal indeed, like every moment it is transient as all moments are it is past, like every moment in the next moment. And yet it is decisive, and filled with the eternal. Such a moment ought to have a distinctive name let us call it the Fullness of Time.

Zadie Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Moment
Peculiar
Next
Indeed
Moments
Filled
Temporal
Past
Eternal
Decisive
Character
Ought
Transient
Every
Name
Distinctive
Time
Names
Fullness
Like
Call
Brief

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
Zadie Smith
Image
I'm always interested in the way people speak and move in their environment, in a very particular environment. I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the any novel is a local thing always.
Zadie Smith
Image
Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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
Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?
Zadie Smith
Image
To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.
Zadie Smith
Image
When I was 13, I really used to skip down the street, happy in thinking, Oh, well, someone's suffering pain in order for me to feel this pleasure.
Zadie Smith
Image
The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
Image
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
Zadie Smith
Image
An essential part of power is the freedom not to think too deeply
Zadie Smith
Image
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
Zadie Smith
Image
I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.
Zadie Smith
Image
You're a library of me.
Zadie Smith
Image
I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
Image
This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
Zadie Smith
Image
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
Zadie Smith
Image
People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.
Zadie Smith
Image
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