“I'd decided to establish a new rule for myself: read for half an hour an evening, no matter what.” — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I never bought the idea of individual genius from which the novel spews forth. It's always an act of curation. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you… — 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
It's a feeling of happiness that knocks me clean out of adjectives. I think sometimes that the best reason for writing novels… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For 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
