Top 272 Quotes & Sayings by Zadie Smith - Page 2

All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.

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.

Unless you consider yourself some sort of human brand, which I don't, you have to deal with the fact that different people are going to like different aspects of your work. It's not consistent. I am not consistent. But I feel OK with that.

Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel.

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it.

People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.

Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the novel is a local thing.

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.

I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.

Some people like just sitting down and being taken for a ride. That's a beautiful thing that fiction can do. But it's not the only thing. In television and film, people are ready to accept any kind of jump cut, but the slightest disturbance on the page ruffles their feathers.

There is a kind of desperate need for somebody to tell everyone what to do, which I find really peculiar in America. And then when you tell them, they're not interested, because it's also a country where everybody's opinion is their opinion, and they really don't give a damn what you think. So it's a very odd experience.

A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18.

I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.

It seems to me that we often commit ourselves wholly to something while knowing almost nothing concrete about it. Another word for that, I suppose, is 'faith.'

Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.

That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.

English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.

If you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn't be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage.

I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. I'm too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely.

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.

I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.

In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.

I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

I think I know a thing or two about the way people love, but I don't know anything about hatred, psychosis, cruelty. Or maybe I don't have the guts to admit that I do.

Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.

All tastes are expressions of belief.

You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.

Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half.

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

The world is now multicultural the same way the world is round. It's not a selling point, it's not a 'quirky' feature, it's not a cynical marketing ploy, it's not an artistic statement, it's not even a plot device. It's a fact, like seedless grapes.

The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.

Time is how you spend your love.

Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.

She did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.

People don't settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.

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.

Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.

Any woman who counts on her face is a fool.

Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.

Don't live in a way that makes you feel dead.

We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.

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.

Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.

Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.