Quote

It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.

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
Often
Seems
Writing
Structures
Subconscious
Structure
Childhood
Deep

More quotes by Zadie Smith

Image
You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.
Zadie Smith
Image
Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.
Zadie Smith
Image
Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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
Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
Zadie Smith
Image
The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
Zadie Smith
Image
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Zadie Smith
Image
Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?
Zadie Smith
Image
Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
Zadie Smith
Image
I know a lot of people who read and think: George [Saunders] is so much fun. There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.
Zadie Smith
Image
Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.
Zadie Smith
Image
I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.
Zadie Smith
Image
You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
Zadie Smith
Image
It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.
Zadie Smith
Image
For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
Zadie Smith
Image
I read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me.
Zadie Smith
Image
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.
Zadie Smith
Image
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
Zadie Smith