Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
constantly explode melancholy might people
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.
exactly father quite suppose turned
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.
best bit love maybe
If you love a young writer, maybe the best thing you can do is give them a little bit of space.
time
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.
change good great humbling writers
Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.
direction pride shame
I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely.
drawn
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.
time
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.
certain people themselves time type willing writer
Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.
amoral anarchic beliefs complex english held morally seems
The conflation of the simple in style with the morally prescriptive in character, and the complex in style with the amoral or anarchic in character, seems to me one of the most persistently fallacious beliefs held by English students.
arrived experience further intense people seem simply version
A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.
almost commit concrete faith ourselves seems wholly
It seems to me that we often commit ourselves wholly to something while knowing almost nothing concrete about it. Another word for that, I suppose, is 'faith.'
aspects consider deal fact human ok people sort unless work
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.
writing space people
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.