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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: 48
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Ghost
Risk
Saunders
Changed
Bardo
Part
Grotesque
Great
Ghosts
Something
Lincoln
Sublime
George

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Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.
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This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
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To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.
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A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.
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We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.
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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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Make sure the lubricant is unscented. Don't join fashionable 'schools of thought.' Read everything.
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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.
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This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
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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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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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Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.
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...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'
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