It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood. — 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
It seems to me that we often commit ourselves wholly to something while knowing almost nothing concrete about it. Another word for… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The belief that consciousness extends beyond death is surely to put more belief in the permanence of self, not less. That seems… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I know to argue against our online lives seems like the argument of the grumpy, old Luddite novelist, but I really always… — 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
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
The conflation of the simple in style with the morally prescriptive in character, and the complex in style with the amoral or… — 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
It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm just interested in women's friendships generally. It always seems to me, and this is just my pet theory, that women are… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I was brought up with the sense that I was absolutely no different from my brothers. I went to college thinking I… — 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