Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
dream new-year phones
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?
future past perfect
The past is always tense, the future perfect.
writing pages matter
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.
life two different
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
achievement honour
Don't confuse honours with achievement.
sole dictionary
I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
reader
Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
skins infection should
Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.
women knowing awkward
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.
writing might reason
The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.
stories ends
The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
connections consciousness reason
Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.
trying jargon hopeless
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
hands veils telling-the-truth
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.