Time Quotes by Zadie Smith

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

— Zadie Smith

Time is how you spend your love.

— Zadie Smith

It was a kiss from the past.

— Zadie Smith

Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.

— Zadie Smith

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

— Zadie Smith

Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

— Zadie Smith

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not…

— Zadie Smith

The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.

— Zadie Smith

“...the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.”

— Zadie Smith

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.

— Zadie Smith

“...when all the time it was that grand tree, taking up half the garden with its roots and not allowing anything else…

— Zadie Smith

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

“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

“And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the…

— Zadie Smith

But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the…

— Zadie Smith

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

Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to…

— Zadie Smith

I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious…

— Zadie Smith

“(Unlike many others around this time, Joyce felt no shame about using the term 'middle class'. In the Chalfen lexicon the middle…

— Zadie Smith

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

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

“These children spend so much time demanding the status of adulthood from you - even when it isn't in your power to…

— Zadie Smith

150 years ago in [Charles] Dickens's time there was at least a sense of craft. So some of the things people had…

— Zadie Smith

It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because…

— Zadie Smith

This because it is never really very cold in England. It is drizzly, and the wind will blow; hail happens, and there…

— Zadie Smith

“But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed…

— Zadie Smith

...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more…

— Zadie Smith

Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a…

— Zadie Smith

“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

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

“...this new delicacy, this suggestions of mortal time working on her just as it works on everybody, spoke to me more loudly…

— Zadie Smith

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the…

— Zadie Smith

“Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been…

— Zadie Smith

I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

— Zadie Smith

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

Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all…

— Zadie Smith

Step back from your Facebook Wall for a moment: Doesn't it, suddenly, look a little ridiculous? Your life in this format?

— Zadie Smith

“...at any time of the day, corduroy is a highly stressful fabric. Rent collectors wear it. Tax collectors, too. History teachers add…

— Zadie Smith

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second…

— Zadie Smith

It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only…

— Zadie Smith