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I always remind myself that [ Jean-Paul] Sartre and [Simone] de Beauvoir didn't have children. And when you don't have children, it might be easier to believe that the child doesn't come with something.

Zadie Smith

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Zadie Smith
Age: 49
Born: 1975
Born: October 27
Essayist
Novelist
Writer
London
England
Zadie Adeline Smith
Didn
Beauvoir
Might
Sartre
Come
Jean
Children
Remind
Something
Paul
Believe
Easier
Always
Child
Doesn

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The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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[George Saunders] is very precise about what he is doing. There isn't a thing left to chance.
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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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English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
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People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
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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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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.
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Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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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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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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Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.
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It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants - packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends - the stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.
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English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
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