The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before.” — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I read Carver. Julio Cortazar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm always interested in the way people speak and move in their environment, in a very particular environment. I'm never interested in… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Keisha Blake, whose celebrated will and focus did not leave her much room for angst, watched her friend ascend to the top… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. Almost everything else… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Novels and stories are sometimes very complex staging grounds to say, in fact, very simple things. Things impossible to say otherwise because… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“But the problem with readers, the idea we're given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“In the middle of a novel, a kind of magical thinking takes over. To clarify, the middle of the novel may not… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“It was a journalist (it was always journalists these days), and she had something to read to him. She’d had a crash… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believing in Barthes?… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“She wanted to read things -- could not resist wanting to read things -- and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“It became clear that Keisha Blake could not start something without finishing it. If she climbed onto the boundary wall of Caldwell,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“Pretty girls lie at the centre of straight culture, dyke culture, fag culture. They sell everything, they buy everything, they ruin great men and… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to have a… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not. — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“Either everything is sacred or nothing is. And if he starts burning other people’s things, then he loses something sacred also. Everyone gets what’s… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... that's the thing that makes me despair: the idea that… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
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. — Zadie Smith Copy Share
But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half. — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“In short, it was precisely the kind of friendship and Englishman makes on holiday, that he can make only on holiday. A friendship that… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. — Zadie Smith Copy Share
“(Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term 'middle class'. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle classes were… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
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… — Zadie Smith Copy Share
![“For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.” quote by Zadie Smith](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/cf1/zadie-smith-584_aesthetic_for-example-you-have-these-grotesque-hil_2386734.jpg)
![“For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain.” quote by Zadie Smith](https://sms4smile.com/q/img-quotes/10b/zadie-smith-584_books_for-me-george-saunders-novel-lincoln-in_765713.png)
