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The really heroic thing about Nick Hornby is that he lives in north London and rarely leaves it... Every English writer needs their corner that is forever England - but only a few brave men choose to make that corner Highbury.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Forever
Corners
Lives
Leaves
Needs
London
Thing
English
Nick
Every
Brave
Heroic
Really
England
Corner
Make
Choose
North
Men
Writer
Rarely

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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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Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
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It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
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Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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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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My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
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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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Full stories are as rare as honesty.
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
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Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands.
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I do my best work under pressure, so I’ll nick an artery, and my husband isn’t allowed to stanch the bleeding till I’ve banged out a chapter.
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Most of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Zadie Smith
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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?
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It's easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy
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It was a kiss from the past.
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It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
Zadie Smith