Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
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.
time
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.
time
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.
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.
everybody maybe might pleasure time useful
It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused.
ended family keeps people realize school thinking time
In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.
self good-times knows
Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.
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.
books encourage hear intend meant
One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.
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.'
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.
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.
believed good harder liked oh
Oh yes, my generation liked to be in some pain when they read. The harder it was, the more good we believed it was doing us.
drawn
Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.