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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Shrinks
Sensibility
Language
Individual
Character
Everything
Friendships

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When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what I was writing.
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I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always try to make the argument from the perspective of personal pleasure.
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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.
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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.
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Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.
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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.
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It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
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It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.
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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.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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Time is how you spend your love.
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Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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'A reality shaped around your own desires' - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
Zadie Smith