"You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality."
"Every genuinely literary style, from the high authorial voice to Foster Wallace and his footnotes-within-footnotes, requires the reader to see the world from somewhere in particular, or from many places. So every novelist's literary style is nothing less than an ethical strategy - it's always an attempt to get the reader to care about people who are not the same as he or she is."
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Source: This is how it feels to me by Zadie Smith, www.theguardian.com. October 13, 2001.
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"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."
"The past is always tense, the future perfect."
"Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you."
"Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories."
"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."