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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
Way
Another
Tendency
Things
Problem
Tendencies
Like
Littles
Beloved
World
Little
Suppose
Wells
Dying
Well
Boys
Feel
Natural
Abraham
Feels
Pain
Lincoln

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Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.
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Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.
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He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.
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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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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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... 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.
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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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Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
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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.
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Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?
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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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It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.
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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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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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The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.
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I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.
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Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would.
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.
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