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2e10c93
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Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra--they'll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I'm too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I'm syntactically uptight. I ..
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writing-craft
writing-process
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Zadie Smith |
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777c95e
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Life's not a video game, Felix- there aren't a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn't actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.
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life
nw
zadie-smith
video-games
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Zadie Smith |
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332c0de
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Other people's words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people's words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you're going.
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Zadie Smith |
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f6911f8
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Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadn't, she did what girls generally do when they don't feel the part: she dressed it instead.
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women
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Zadie Smith |
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21f3cb4
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You say you want to talk, But you don't . You stonewall me.
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Zadie Smith |
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a90e933
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This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O'Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus..
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immigrants
immigration
race-relations
race
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Zadie Smith |
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ef0be0d
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oh he loves her, just as the English loved India & Africa & Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly. but maybe it is just the scenery that is wrong. maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending.
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relationships
unfaithfulness
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Zadie Smith |
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057ff4a
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I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.
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Zadie Smith |
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d7ce4df
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Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]
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Zadie Smith |
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d2a7998
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He traced the genealogy of the feeling.
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Zadie Smith |
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f49ed32
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Nostalgia is a luxury.
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Zadie Smith |
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e94f26d
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It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants--packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends--that stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.
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Zadie Smith |
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c7dda73
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It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.' Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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Zadie Smith |
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ae8bb2c
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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Zadie Smith |
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07e1091
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the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
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Zadie Smith |
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4cc6065
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She what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an . But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world.
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Zadie Smith |
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f9c4bf3
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No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack
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Zadie Smith |
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9fb4c4b
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I often wondered: is it some kind of a trade-off? Do others have to lose so we can win? *
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Zadie Smith |
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26cca0b
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Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.
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Zadie Smith |
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0967815
|
I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," said Hifan proudly. Irie inhaled. Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," repeated Millat, impressed. "That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu arse sound to it." Irie frowned. "KEVIN?" We are aware," said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, "that we ha..
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Zadie Smith |
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802b105
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And I became fixated, too, upon Katharine Hepburn's famous Fred and Ginger theory: He gives her class, she gives him sex. Was this a general rule? Did all friendships--all relations--involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power?
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Zadie Smith |
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41dd703
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One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally.
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Zadie Smith |
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99158ee
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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, was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page. (p.332)
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Zadie Smith |
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2270801
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You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.
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Zadie Smith |
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ecafa8b
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No, Keeks - this is a good thing. It's been hell - I know it has. But I don't want to be without... us. You;re the person I - you're my life, Keeks. You have been and you will be and you are. i don't know how you want me to say it. You're for me - you are me. We've always known that - and there's no way out now anyway. I love you. You're for me.
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Zadie Smith |
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0afb0ab
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There is a connection between boredom and the desire for chaos. Despite many disguises and bluffs perhaps she had never stopped wanting chaos.
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Zadie Smith |
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5d31463
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Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became.
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Zadie Smith |
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933377d
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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.
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Zadie Smith |
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07f237b
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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, are fitting. This, Claire argued, is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful....In Claire's presence, you were not faulty or badly designed, no, not at all. You were the fitting receptacle and instrument of your talents and bel..
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Zadie Smith |
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45cd1b9
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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."
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Zadie Smith |
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d528407
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These children spend so much time demanding the status of adulthood from you - even when it isn't in your power to bestow it - and then when the real shit hits the fan, when you need them to be adults, suddenly they're children again.
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Zadie Smith |
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d1e5447
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This was one of the little ways in which he said sorry. They were meant to add up each day.
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sorry
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Zadie Smith |
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511ebe4
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Writing exists (for me) at the intersection of three precarious, uncertain elements: language, the world, the self. The first is never wholly mine; the second I can only ever know in a partial sense; the third is a malleable and improvised response to the previous two.
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Zadie Smith |
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1e4d33d
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More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.
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silence
eerie
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Zadie Smith |
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f302906
|
As a fact it was, in my mind, at one and the same time absolutely true and obviously untrue, and perhaps only children are able to accommodate double-faced facts like these.
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Zadie Smith |
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3210ad3
|
Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.
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Zadie Smith |
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622746a
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Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home, and finding they don't fit.
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Zadie Smith |
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ef60273
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Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?
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asian-hair
asians
uk
black-people
business
hair
race
england
inequality
london
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Zadie Smith |
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62b544c
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Faith is hard to achieve, easy to lose.
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Zadie Smith |
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419ffc9
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You are never stronger, thought Samad as approached the doctor, than when you land on the other side of despair.
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Zadie Smith |
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b233932
|
Like most children, theirs was a relation based on verbs, not nouns.
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Zadie Smith |
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d5d5aa1
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It hurts to look at what you can't have
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Zadie Smith |
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4fbc66b
|
Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been times when the woman has feared that she loves the man more than he loves her. He has always denied this.
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favourite
inlove
nw
zadiesmith
quotes
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Zadie Smith |
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bd434b7
|
13.5 Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan's academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.
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Zadie Smith |