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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.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Like
Technical
Admit
Intimate
Relation
Didn
Young
Writing
Things

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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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.
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As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.
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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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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale.
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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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Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
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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
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When I was 13, I really used to skip down the street, happy in thinking, Oh, well, someone's suffering pain in order for me to feel this pleasure.
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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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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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Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.
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The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.
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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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Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.
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I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
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Time is how you spend your love.
Zadie Smith
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It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
Zadie Smith