Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control. — 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
In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves,… — 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
But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“He wanted to meet her for the first time, over and over...He told himself the story that this was the great tragedy… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“...at any time of the day, corduroy is a highly stressful fabric. Rent collectors wear it. Tax collectors, too. History teachers add… — 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
“To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
This because it is never really very cold in England. It is drizzly, and the wind will blow; hail happens, and there… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“(Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term 'middle class'. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“I think Seneca is right: life feels longer the more you engage with it… I should be loving sculpture! But I have… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Always the fear of consequences. Always this terrible inertia. What he was about to do to his father was so huge, so… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
And now the moment. Such a moment has a peculiar character. It is brief and temporal indeed, like every moment; it is… — 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
...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format? — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all… — 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
“...this new delicacy, this suggestions of mortal time working on her just as it works on everybody, spoke to me more loudly… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Once they were the same age. Now Leah is aging in dog years. Her thirty-five is seven times his, and seven times… — 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
“Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“...the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.” — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“...when all the time it was that grand tree, taking up half the garden with its roots and not allowing anything else… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time. — 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
- 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
