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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

More quotes by Zadie Smith

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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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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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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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(Feedback) People become addicted to it. That’s why journalism is so popular, because you want to hear, every day, what people think of what you just wrote. I think a little patience on that front can be good, too.
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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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The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.
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The past is always tense, the future perfect.
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The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.
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The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
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Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.
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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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The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.
Zadie Smith
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You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.
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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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... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.
Zadie Smith
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Those beliefs about the essential goodness or beauty of the world are fundamentally paper-thin bullshit. There's not an essential belief that isn't a contingent belief. It could all be destroyed in a second, at any second. And I have an issue with that.
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I don't ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man's question. I ask whom did I live for.
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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.
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I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
Zadie Smith
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It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
Zadie Smith