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For me, [deep structures] might be something very simply to do with the split in my family. That's why I'm always thinking about opposites. It's so childish, really, but that might be simply what it is.
Zadie Smith
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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Always
Opposites
Thinking
Structure
Deep
Simply
Family
Childish
Might
Structures
Something
Split
Really
Splits
More quotes by Zadie Smith
If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
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You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
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I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
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I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
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People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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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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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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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.
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I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
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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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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?
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It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
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English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.
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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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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.
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