Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
games numbers video
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.
interested local novel universal
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.
contempt word writer wrote
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.
childcare children people time
People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into child mode; there's no down time.
mind seems tend trying work
I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.
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.
drawn
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.
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.
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.
stories ends
The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
hands veils telling-the-truth
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it.