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But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Would
Lying
Like
Future
Tense
Perfect
Tall
Black
Surely
Tell
Wicked
Others
Tales
Past
Myth
Always
Spread

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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.
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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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One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are.
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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.
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Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of ones own resources.
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I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.
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She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
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Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
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I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.
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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.
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She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
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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.
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When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.
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I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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