Zadie Smith Quotes About Books

Quotes about: Books

• I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, House, Mum

• For example, you have these grotesque, hilarious, profane ghosts in the book [Lincoln in the Bardo]. Even the concept of talking ghosts is, from an aesthetic point of view, grotesque. But you seem compelled by that risk in order to get to the other end of the equation.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Views, Order

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Giving, Feelings

• It has historically been a comfort for the bourgeois and that you can read the most extreme books and not change. You can read A Christmas Carol and not change in any way.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Comfort, Way

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

• I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, People, Battle

• If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.

  Zadie Smith

  Mistake, Book, Writing

  "Learning curve". Interview with Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. September 2, 2005.

• All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, People, Fiction

• It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, People, Telling The Truth

  "On the beginning" by Zadie Smith, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2006.

• As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Roots, Mutiny

• I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Writing, Ambition

  "White knuckle ride". The Guardian interview, www.theguardian.com. December 11, 2000.

• Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.

  Zadie Smith

  Book, Reading, People

  "Learning curve" by Aida Edemariam, www.theguardian.com. September 3, 2005.

• First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.

  Zadie Smith

  Children, Book, Writing

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