Zadie Smith Quotes

Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over irie, wa...

Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arr...

Brute force outraged her, I think, because it was outside her beloved realm of language, and in response to it she really had nothing to say.

But Archie did not pluck Clara Bowden from a vacuum. And it's about time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, fr...

But I was so much older then, sang Archie mischievously, quoting a ten-year-old Dylan track, arching his head round the door, I’m younger than that now.

But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuing us, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, and the true professionals begin to t...

But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.

But equally you can’t fight for a freedom you’ve forgotten how to identify.

But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which o...

But i cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the *truth*. I have to worry about the truth that can be *lived with*.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissoluti...

But it's hard, when you're at a loose end yourself, to be happy for others.

But like all things, the business has two sides. Clean white teeth are not always wise, now are they? Par exemplum: when I was in the Congo, the only way I could identify the nigger was by the whitene...

But the light in front of the mosque-- the light I stood in as I was greeted like a local hero, simply for rising from my bed three hours after most of the women and children I lived with-- this light...

Clarence, look see! It de young prince in white. 'Im come to play domino. I jus' look in his eye and I and I knew 'im play domino. 'Im an hexpert.

Deal with the drops when you can see the ocean. Another

Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]

Do others have to lose so we can win?

Don’t give me face! How you be offended? You know! Is truth!

Each couple is its own vaudeville act.