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Zadie Smith Quotes


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Quotes by Zadie Smith

Showing 51-60 of 93 Quotes by Zadie Smith

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.

~Zadie Smith

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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If you love a young writer, maybe the best thing you can do is give them a little bit of space.

~Zadie Smith

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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 need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

~Zadie Smith

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.

~Zadie Smith

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

~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.

~Zadie Smith

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Novelist

Born: October 25th, 1975

Links

Find Zadie Smith on Amazon

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