The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
A writer's duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
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… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to… — 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
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think my whole professional life has been based on this hunch I had, early on, that many people feel just… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in… — 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
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
When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination:… — 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
“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
“Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“The term 'role model' is so odious, but the truth is it's a very strong writer indeed who gets by without a… — 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
My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short… — 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
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than… — 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
If you love a young writer, maybe the best thing you can do is give them a little bit of space. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The choices a writer makes within a tradition - preferring Milton to Moliere, caring for Barth over Barthelme - constitute some of… — 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
