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It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels is to experience those four and a half hours after you write the final word.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Feelings
Feeling
Best
Four
Knocks
Reason
Word
Adjectives
Sometimes
Hours
Novels
Writing
Happiness
Final
Think
Half
Finals
Thinking
Experience
Clean
Write
Novel

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been writing about that subject for a while.
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What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.
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I am very selfish, really. I lived for love.
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
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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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If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
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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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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders'] ghosts was a part of it.
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English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
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Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?
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Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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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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(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)
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All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.
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Time is how you spend your love.
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
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It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
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