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It's not in good taste to have talking ghosts in a grown-up novel.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Ghost
Taste
Novel
Talking
Good
Ghosts
Grown

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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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She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
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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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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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It made me feel that I had to work very hard, but I've always felt I had to work very hard to get my own approval.
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And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.
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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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When I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.
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For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.
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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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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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Where I come from, said Archie, a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her. Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean, said Samad tersely, that it is a good idea.
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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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Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression ? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.
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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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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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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
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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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...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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