One thing you learn about the novel as a form is that it's always smarter than you are. — 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 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
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
For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is about a problem of pain. — 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
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
There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right. — 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
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
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
The novel leads you places that you never could have gotten to otherwise. — 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
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
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
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
- 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
![“For me, George Saunders novel [Lincoln in the Bardo] is…” quote by Zadie Smith](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/10b/zadie-smith-584_books_for-me-george-saunders-novel-lincoln-in_765713.jpg)
