Quote

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

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
Upon
Recognizing
Intractable
Difficult
Novelists
Loosen
Problem
Suddenly
Fluidity
Come
Keys
Omen
Without
Ultimate
Structural
Even
Problems
Knots
Good
Hold
Novelist
Simply
Solved

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
I used to take that God's-eye view as a comfort when I was a child. I'd think, Well, we couldn't find the world meaningful at all if it weren't for death. Of course, that is the smuggest and most intolerable of all perspectives because I'm not suffering from the death or the pain.
Zadie Smith
Image
Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
Zadie Smith
Image
Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because they are repeated in so many exploitative contexts - adverts and TV shows and political speeches.
Zadie Smith
Image
I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.
Zadie Smith
Image
The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
Zadie Smith
Image
Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase at the end of the day--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamental
Zadie Smith
Image
Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
Zadie Smith
Image
A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
Zadie Smith
Image
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
Image
This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
Zadie Smith
Image
Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
Zadie Smith
Image
The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of the most personal information we can have about him.
Zadie Smith
Image
All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
Zadie Smith
Image
I guess I've always written more from the opposite perspective, that kind of existentialist perspective which argues that existence precedes essence. And there really isn't anything essential in there - you're the product of your actions, which can always change. And they retrospectively make you one way or another.
Zadie Smith
Image
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
Zadie Smith
Image
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
Image
They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.
Zadie Smith
Image
World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
Zadie Smith
Image
...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
Zadie Smith
Image
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
Zadie Smith