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Something in me was changed by Lincoln in the Bardo, and the great sublime/grotesque risk of [George Saunders'] ghosts was a part of it.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
George
Ghost
Risk
Saunders
Changed
Bardo
Part
Grotesque
Great
Ghosts
Something
Lincoln
Sublime

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?
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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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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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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
Zadie Smith
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My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
Zadie Smith
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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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First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
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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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The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
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I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world.
Zadie Smith
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
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Each couple is its own vaudeville act.
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She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.
Zadie Smith
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The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems to me a comfort that you're allowing yourself.
Zadie Smith
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
Zadie Smith
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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
Zadie Smith
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Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
Zadie Smith
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She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.
Zadie Smith
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I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.
Zadie Smith