Zadie Smith Quotes & Sayings (Page 2)

“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?”

“I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.”

“I'm never interested in writing a kind of neutral, universal novel that could be set anywhere. To me, the novel is a local thing.”

“I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.”

“I lost many literary battles the day I read 'Their Eyes Were Watching God.' I had to concede that occasionally aphorisms have their power. I had to give up the idea that Keats had a monopoly on the lyrical.”

“Don't confuse honours with achievement.”

“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.”

“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.”

“My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world.”

“You become a different writer when you approach a short story. When things are not always having to represent other things, you find real human beings begin to cautiously appear on your pages.”