“Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before.” — 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
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
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise. — 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
There's a perception that novels can't usually allow for your kind of absolute attention to detail. — 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
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
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
“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
“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
The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with. — 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
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
I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the novel is a… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“He's one of those people, thought Howard, who looks like one quality very much, and the quality in this case is 'noble'.… — 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
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
It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You… — 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
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
“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
- 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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 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 around. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
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 Image
Oh, I know that. You know me, baby, I cannot be broken. Takes a giant to snap me in half. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
