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Zadie Smith Quotes


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Quotes by Zadie Smith

Showing 81-90 of 93 Quotes by Zadie Smith

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

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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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

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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

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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

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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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

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

~Zadie Smith

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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.

~Zadie Smith

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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

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Biography

Nationality: British

Type: Novelist

Born: October 25th, 1975

Links

Find Zadie Smith on Amazon

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