"You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality."
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Quote collection
Zadie Smith quotes (page 1 of 12)
226 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you."
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"The past is always tense, the future perfect."
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"Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories."
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"Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page."
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"Time is how you spend your love."
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"This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?"
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"I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me."
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"Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection."
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"Don't confuse honours with achievement."
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"The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer."
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"Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer."
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"She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down."
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"Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet."
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"Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still."
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"The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story."
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"…maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith"
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"Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over."
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"It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties."
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