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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. "

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" All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it. "

Zadie Smith

Living

" I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight. "

" I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the novel is a local thing. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. "

" Oh yes, my generation liked to be in some pain when they read. The harder it was, the more good we believed it was doing us. "

Zadie Smith

Good

Pain

" I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame. "

" Don't confuse honours with achievement. "

" Any artist who aligns themselves with a politician is making a category error because what politicians do is not on a human scale, it is on a geopolitical scale. "

" Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied. "

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

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

" I'm always a bit suspicious of writers who have the gift of the gab. "

" I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction. "

Zadie Smith

Against

Battle

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

" Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls. "

" A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience. "

" 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. "

" I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage. "

" Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed. "

" I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to. "

" There is a kind of desperate need for somebody to tell everyone what to do, which I find really peculiar in America. And then when you tell them, they're not interested, because it's also a country where everybody's opinion is their opinion, and they really don't give a damn what you think. So it's a very odd experience. "

" 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. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. "

" People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them. "

" Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts. "

" Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own. "

" The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd. "

" I suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do. "

" I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. "