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I have a natural tendency to feel well about the world, I suppose, one way or another. But then there is the problem of pain. There are things like [Abraham] Lincoln's beloved little boy dying.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Well
Boys
Feel
Natural
Abraham
Feels
Pain
Lincoln
Way
Another
Tendency
Things
Problem
Tendencies
Like
Littles
Beloved
World
Little
Suppose
Wells
Dying

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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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A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been writing about that subject for a while.
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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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They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.
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The nineties, ecstatic decade!
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She loved you in the morning because the day was new.
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I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.
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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
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The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.
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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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I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.
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I know a lot of people who read and think: George [Saunders] is so much fun. There's no denying you're fun to read, but as a writer I think of [George Saunders] as, in fact, not a fun and freewheeling type but really an obsessive control artist.
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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.
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But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
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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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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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