« All You Quotes · Zadie Smith's Page
You Quotes by Zadie Smith
- Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
- Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad.
- You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.
- As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get…
- I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
- If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
- It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say 'I' into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.
- My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or…
- Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
- Desperation, weakness, vulnerability - these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.
- I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you…
- It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm…
- Novels are not about expressing yourself, they're about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you…
- The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance…
- You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human…
- There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right.
- If you love a young writer, maybe the best thing you can do is give them a little bit of space.
- A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you…
- Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do…
- Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.
More You Quotes
- Dedicate yourself to the good you deserve and desire for yourself. Give yourself peace of mind. You deserve to be happy. You… — Hannah Arendt
- These are the fifties, you know. The disgusting, posturing fifties. — Hannah Arendt
- I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore… — Pietro Aretino
- If you want to annoy your neighbors, tell the truth about them. — Pietro Aretino
- Flattery and deceit are the darlings of great men, and so with these men spread the butter on thick, if you want… — Pietro Aretino
- Having been a child actor, I remember how directors would trick me to get good performances out of me. I don't think… — Asia Argento
- In Italy the censor is very old and there are many judges and psychiatrists who analyse you. — Dario Argento
- I do think the heart can balance out the mind, if your heart is in a good place it can give you… — Alexis Arguello
- I believe more in precision, when you have the capability, like when you see a mosquito fly and you're able to hit… — Alexis Arguello
- I'd take precision any day over power; as far as being tactical you know you have to see what's going on in… — Alexis Arguello
- Haiti, Haiti, the further I am from you, the less I breathe. Haiti, I love you, and I will love you always.… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide
- When you care about human beings, you do your best to not repress and to not let people to repress and to… — Jean-Bertrand Aristide