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" 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 thee to a books catalogue. "
Zadie Smith
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" You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. "
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" English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be. "
Zadie Smith
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" Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count. "
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" We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. "
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" It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate. "
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" You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books. "
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" I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time. "
Zadie Smith
Teeth
Time
White
" The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause. "
Zadie Smith
Duty
Explain
Argument
" Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite? "
Zadie Smith
Corner
He
Like
" 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 not have to buy anything in order to stay. "
Zadie Smith
Good
Stay
People
" 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 you stop trying. "
Zadie Smith
You
Trying
Story
" Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you. "
Zadie Smith
Important
Space
Time
" In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes. "
Zadie Smith
Family
People
School
" The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. "
Zadie Smith
Threat
Motherhood
Just
" I read Carver. Julio Cortazar. Amis's essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, anything at all, that doesn't sound like me. "
Zadie Smith
Read
Anything
Me
" Unless you consider yourself some sort of human brand, which I don't, you have to deal with the fact that different people are going to like different aspects of your work. It's not consistent. I am not consistent. But I feel OK with that. "
Zadie Smith
Work
I Am
You
" Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed. "
Zadie Smith
Writing
Ways
Way
" If you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn't be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage. "
Zadie Smith
Life
Difficult
Me
" Asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form. And those taught that they deserve nothing rightly enjoy it when they succeed in terms the culture understands. "
Zadie Smith
Enjoy
Succeed
Talk
" Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still. "
Zadie Smith
Joy
Reading
Place
" I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash. "
Zadie Smith
Like
Way
Trying
" 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 should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper. "
Zadie Smith
Class
You
Roots
" English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control. "
Zadie Smith
Two
Writing
Control
" Nabokov, who I loved more than any other writer when I was young, had such contempt for dialogue. When I was younger, I never wrote a word of dialogue because of him. I thought it was a childish part of a novel. "
Zadie Smith
Never
Childish
Loved
" When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark. "
Zadie Smith
Dark
Always
Laughter
" English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life. "
Zadie Smith
Life
Growing Up
Loved
" Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well. "
Zadie Smith
Well
World
Young
" Young people understand the world. They should be listened to on matters of politics and world organization. But they know nothing of their own lives. "
Zadie Smith
People
World
Organization
" Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied. "
Zadie Smith
Tell
Yourself
Truth
" I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight. "
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Person
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