Zadie Smith Quotes - Page 7

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• I don't actually believe in the extension of consciousness after death.

  Zadie Smith

  Believe, Consciousness, After Death

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• You don't come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn't a strong aspect of your personality. A reality shaped around your own desires - there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

  Zadie Smith

  Strong, New York, Ambition

  "Zadie Smith On Manhattan’s ‘Sociopathic’ Ambition" By Carolyn Gregoire, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 10, 2014.

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• The nineties, ecstatic decade!

  Zadie Smith

  Ecstatic, Decades

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• Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.

  Zadie Smith

  Girl, Nerd, Get Money

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• It's got two aspects. The bit that involves the public life I could not really tolerate and cannot really tolerate. I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that.

  Zadie Smith

  Ideas, Two, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• To a novelist, fluidity is the ultimate good omen; suddenly difficult problems are simply solved, intractable structural knots loosen themselves, and you come upon the key without even recognizing that this is what you hold.

  Zadie Smith

  Keys, Novelists, Fluidity

  "Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays". Book by Zadie Smith, 2009.

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• 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.

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• Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase "at the end of the day"--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.

  Zadie Smith

  Football, People, The End Of The Day

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• He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

  Zadie Smith

  Would Be, Lasts, Firsts

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• The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.

  Zadie Smith

  Real, Rap, Ghetto

  "We are family". Interview with Laura Barton, www.theguardian.com. March 3, 2005.

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• It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

  Zadie Smith

  Home, Air, Shoes

  "On Beauty". Book by Zadie Smith, 2005.

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• It reminds me that those of us who turn in disgust from what we consider an overinflated liberal-bourgeois sense of self should be careful what we wish for: our denuded networked selves don't look more free, they just look more owned.

  Zadie Smith

  Self, Wish, Looks

  "Generation Why?" by Zadie Smith, www.nybooks.com. November 25, 2010.

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• And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.

  Zadie Smith

  Writing, Healthy, Noise

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

  Zadie Smith

  Feelings, Genealogy

  Zadie Smith (2006). “On Beauty”, p.197, Penguin UK

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• The idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd.

  Zadie Smith

  Creativity, Motherhood, Ideas

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• My short stories have always pushed twenty pages. That's no length for a short story to be. You either do them short like Carver or you stop trying.

  Zadie Smith

  Trying, Twenties, Stories

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• They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.

  Zadie Smith

  Weed, Growing Up, Sibling

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• World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'

  Zadie Smith

  World, Firsts, Social Network

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• 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 arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.

  Zadie Smith

  Children, Moving, Islands

  Zadie Smith (2000). “White teeth”

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• The arena of women's lives is somewhat more intimate. If a woman goes out with an incredibly attractive man and they break up, that woman is not more attractive to men. It's completely irrelevant to them. That's an example of the way women's minds work.

  Zadie Smith

  Men, Mind, Example

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

  Zadie Smith

  Artist, Reality, Rapper

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• English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.

  Zadie Smith

  Fall, Writing, Epic

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• When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.

  Zadie Smith

  People, Different, Looks

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• What interests me in [Lincoln in the Bardo] is a slight perverse balance between the sublime and the grotesque. Like you could have landed only on the sublime. But my argument is that the sublime couldn't exist without this other half.

  Zadie Smith

  Sublime, Balance, Half

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I was thinking about the generation before us, like John Barth and all of those pomo dudes who had that idea of, instead of hiding the structure and making it look organic and natural, we're going to put the structure on the outside. But most of the time, at least for me, all I could attend to [in Swing Time] was that act of structural self-consciousness.

  Zadie Smith

  Thinking, Swings, Self

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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