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I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Novel
Idea
Individual
Ideas
Always
Curation
Never
Bought
Forth
Genius

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When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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To me, these kind of everyday miseries act as a fatal disqualifier. My sunniest beliefs are basically contingent on the fact that my child is not dying of cancer right now.
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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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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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Each couple is its own vaudeville act.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpretive possibility of those actions.
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I'm not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human — I only love to be so.
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I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.
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All tastes are expressions of belief.
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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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It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.
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I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.
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In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.
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It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.
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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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Full stories are as rare as honesty.
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