I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
When I was young, I was very technical about these things. I didn't like to admit to any intimate relation with what… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I'm a writer who never writes about sex. It's so far from my own fictional world. — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood. — 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
Try to read your own work as a stranger would read it, or even better, as an enemy would. — 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 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
I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing… — 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
You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you… — 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
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might… — 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
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
When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination:… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
Sometimes I think my whole professional life has been based on this hunch I had, early on, that many people feel just… — 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
“Writers do not write what they want, they write what they can. When I was 21 I wanted to write like Kafka.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Maybe every author needs to keep faith with Nabokov, and every reader with Barthes. For how can you write, believing in Barthes?… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when,… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
“Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer. — 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
Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed. — 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… — 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
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
The young people have a phrase for this now, which is "slay in your lane." That's a very important principle of writing.… — Zadie Smith Copy Share Image
When I was 21, I wanted to write like Kafka. But, unfortunately for me, I wrote like a script editor for 'The… — 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
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever. — 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
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life. — 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
![“It seems to me now that the deep structures [in writing] are often subconscious and set in childhood.” quote by Zadie Smith](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/023/zadie-smith-584_architecture_it-seems-to-me-now-that-the-deep-structu_1218505.jpg)
![“A lot of [George Saunders] early stories now feel prophetic. Take the recent election [of Donald Trump]. Historians in 100 years might write about it as being the first internet election, in which what happened was actually an expression in the real world of a virtual reality. And you've been…” quote by Zadie Smith](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/2d4/zadie-smith-584_election_a-lot-of-george-saunders-early-stories-n_1177788.jpg)
