Zadie Smith Quotes

Things that came naturally to females did not impress my mother, not at all. In her view you might as well be proud of breathing or walking or giving birth. Our

You go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It’s a f...

If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition...

If my dad hadn’t died young? No way I’d be here. It’s the pain. Jews, gays, women, blacks—the bloody Irish. That’s our secret fucking strength.

You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.

Perhaps sex isn't of the body at all. Perhaps it is a function of language.

Philosophy is listening to warbling posh boys, it is being more bored than you have ever been in your life, more bored than you thought it possible to be.

Please. Do me this one, great favor, Jones. If ever you hear anyone, when you are back home—if you, if we, get back to our respective homes—if ever you hear anyone speak of the East, and here his voic...

Claire spoke often in her poetry of the idea of fittingness: that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it--no matter how small or insignificant both might be--are matched exactly,...

Portnoy was not Roth and he was not real, but in him is enshrined a genuine Rothian freedom, created by Roth, once impossible, now fully realized, a freedom which anyone can now easily access. You don...

Nostalgia is a luxury.

Though it was such a bizarre world, filled only with the echoing voices of people who had apparently already agreed with each other.

You don't have favourites among your children, but you do have allies.

Oh, sister - good news - I'm getting married! I hugged her but felt the familiar smile fasten itself on my face, the same one I wore in London and New York in the face of similar news, and I experienc...

Even by the standards with which she is familiar, Liberia is exceptional. Three quarters of the population live below the poverty line—that’s one U.S. dollar a day—half are on less than fifty cents a...

But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.

Romance was beyond me: it required a form of personal mystery I couldn't manufacture and disliked in others. I couldn't pretend that my legs do not grow hair or that my body does not excrete a variety...

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.

You need a certain head on your shoulders to edit a novel, and it’s not the head of a writer in the thick of it, nor the head of a professional editor who’s read it in twelve different versions. It’s...