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" I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific. "

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" I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy. "

Zadie Smith

Writing

Think

Life

" 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. "

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

" World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?' "

" 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 beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages. "

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

" 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. "

" You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality. "

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

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

" Don't confuse honours with achievement. "

" I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me. "

" There's constantly this melancholy about British hip-hop. People are always waiting for it to explode like American hip-hop, but it might just be that British hip-hop will always be as it is: an underground thing which will stay that way. "

" 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 want to express yourself. "

" When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark. "

" Without the balancing context of everyday life, all you have is the news, and news by its nature is generally bad. "

" The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential. "

" I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. I'm too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible. "

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

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

" 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. "

" I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it. "

" 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 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

Books

Keep

" I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle. "

" Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count. "

Zadie Smith

Want

Own

" My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world. "

" Some people like just sitting down and being taken for a ride. That's a beautiful thing that fiction can do. But it's not the only thing. In television and film, people are ready to accept any kind of jump cut, but the slightest disturbance on the page ruffles their feathers. "

" I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated. "

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