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776bfde
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What I have realized, is that the generations,' Samad continued as they sped through miles and miles of unchanging flatlands, 'they speak to each other, Jones. It's not a line, Life is not a line -- this is not palm-reading -- it's a circle, and they speak to us. That is why you cannot read fate; you must experience it.
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Zadie Smith |
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6649a2b
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Maybe I have thought intellect more important than faith. And now it seems this final temptation has been put in front of me.
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Zadie Smith |
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c0958d5
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Now, every time I learn something more about him, I like him less. So you see, we were better off the way we were.
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Zadie Smith |
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457adcb
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Until finally the tank rolled into a day that History has not remembered. That Memory has made no effort to retain. A sudden stone submerged. False teeth floating silently to the bottom of a glass. May 6, 1945.
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Zadie Smith |
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5d92cb2
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One strong man and one weak is a colony, Sapper Jones," said Samad."
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Zadie Smith |
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6e02d40
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It was during this time that Archie learned the true power of do-it-yourself, how it uses a hammer and nails to replace nouns and adjectives, how it allows men to communicate. A lesson he kept with him all his life.
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Zadie Smith |
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d4fbe18
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In short, it was precisely the kind of friendship an Englishman makes on holiday, that he can make only on holiday. A friendship that crosses class and color, a friendship that takes as its basis physical proximity and survives because the Englishman assumes the physical proximity will not continue.
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Zadie Smith |
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2a179e9
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Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you ar..
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Zadie Smith |
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1409e3e
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'L]ook, of course I know you and your family have "beliefs",' began Howard uneasily, as if 'beliefs' were a kind of condition, like oral herpes."
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funny
values
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Zadie Smith |
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d8971ba
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Perhaps all this displacement of anxiety into the physical realm was a feminine way of simplifying a far deeper and more insoluble difference, for Natalie believed Tonya had a gift for living and Natalie herself did not seem to have this gift.
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Zadie Smith |
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bbb755e
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People were not people but merely an effect of language. You could conjure them up and kill them in a sentence
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Zadie Smith |
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3dc2aa2
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Like millions of British people, we paid our taxes in the hope that they would be used to establish shared institutions from which all might benefit equally.
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Zadie Smith |
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e969e45
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Hey! 'Hey!' But there was no name to put on the end of Hey and a six foot two black man shouting Hey in a dense crowd does not create easiness wherever he goes.
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Zadie Smith |
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8199e4f
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Still, in the top left-hand corner, a huge button bought in New York's Union Square in the mid eighties: I myself have never been able to figure out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
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Zadie Smith |
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d82e6b7
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It takes a lot of practice to ensure that a whole bottle of Cabernet and a pint of beer makes only a slight dent in your sobriety, but Howard felt he had reached this stage of accomplishment.
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Zadie Smith |
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b0ec17c
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And even before he said it, he wondered why he had to, why he felt so malevolent this evening.
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Zadie Smith |
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ab4e79a
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Or maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous.
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Zadie Smith |
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d92a15a
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If the aim is to be liked by more and more people, whatever is unusual about a person gets flattened out.
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Zadie Smith |
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4ddcb9c
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It was his fourth trip to the attic in so many days, ferrying out the odds and ends of a marriage to his new flat, and the Hoover was amongst the very last items he reclaimed - one of the most broken things, most ugly things, the things you demand out of sheer bloody-mindedness because you have lost the house. This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love
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Zadie Smith |
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b5eea0d
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Maybe there will always be men who say the right thing at the right time, who step forward like Thespis at just the right moment of history, and then there will be men like Archie Jones who are just there to make up the numbers. Or, worse still, who are given their big break only to come in on cue and die a death right there, centre stage, for all to see
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Zadie Smith |
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8564d83
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How many times,' Samad growled, after watching his son purchase the autobiography of Malcolm X, 'is it necessary to say thank you in a single transaction? Thank you when you hand the book over, thank you when she receives it, thank you when she tells you the price, thank you when you sign the cheque, thank you when she takes it! They call it English politeness when it is simply arrogance. The only being who deserves this kind of thanks is A..
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Zadie Smith |
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9400a6c
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Big words. But how fragile is Clara's atheism! Like one of those tiny glass doves Hortense keeps in the lounge cabinet - a breath would knock it over.
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Zadie Smith |
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a4bef05
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You could drown in memories like these, but she tried to swim free of them. She jumped over the small wall that fringed the Iqbal house, as she had a million times over, and rang the doorbell. Past tense, future imperfect
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Zadie Smith |
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e53ea60
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Racial homogeneity is no guarantor of peace, any more than racial heterogeneity is fated to fail.
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Zadie Smith |
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0212e34
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The art of mid-life is surely always cloudier than the art of youth, as life itself gets cloudier.
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Zadie Smith |
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f46189b
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We will never be perfect: that is our limitation.
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Zadie Smith |
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bb6b75d
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in fact the Mail's campaign is a chilling lesson in how a superficial manipulation of liberal identity politics can be used to silence a genuinely protesting voice, one that is trying to speak for us all.
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Zadie Smith |
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18b146a
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He is a black man. He is often thought of as a nothing, a cipher. But he has layers upon layers upon layers.
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Zadie Smith |
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307898e
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Generally she kept her head down, but on the occasions she raised it she was treated to the most intimate of panoramic views: the scattered possessions of the three people she had created. Several small items made her cry: a tiny woollen bootie, a broken orthodontic retainer, a woggle from a cub-scout tie. She had not become Malcolm X's private secretary. She never did direct a movie or run for the Senate. She could not fly a plane. But her..
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motherhood
feminism
inspiration
malcolm-x
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Zadie Smith |
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ef65b95
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Obscurely disappointed, as we sometimes are when the things we profess to dislike don't happen, she looked up abruptly and smiled at him.
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Zadie Smith |
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601abca
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When you are not at home in your self, as a child, you don't experience your self as "natural" or "inevitable"--as so many other people seem to do--and this, though melancholy at the time, can come with certain distinct advantages. Not to take yourself as a natural, unquestionable entity can lead you in turn to become aware of the radical contingency of life in general, its supremely accidental nature."
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Zadie Smith |
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c1853a1
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He saw that the highest compliment a white Englishman can give himself is the assertion that he is "color-blind," by which he means he has been able to overlook the fact of your color--to look past it--to the "you" beneath."
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Zadie Smith |
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a5b964d
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fiction can't be written to comply with winning arguments.
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Zadie Smith |
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fe9c4d8
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The happy ending is never universal. Someone is always left behind.
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Zadie Smith |
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2703e61
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Jeder Augenblick geschieht zweifach: innen und aussen, und es sind zwei unterschiedliche Geschichten.
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Zadie Smith |
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477c06e
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But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain.
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Zadie Smith |
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e5f861a
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And now I found I couldn't stay small, my eyes stayed closed but my voice lifted, and kept lifting, I got louder and louder, I did not feel I had control of it, exactly, it was something I'd released that now rose up and away and escaped my reach.
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Zadie Smith |
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c5f60f2
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Ryan was convinced of the ageing fifties motto 'Live fast, die young', and, though his scooter didn't do more than 22 m.p.h. downhill...
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Zadie Smith |
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2627a19
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In short, it was precisely the kind of friendship an Englishman makes on holiday, that he can make only on holiday. A friendship that crosses class and colour, a friendship that takes as its basis physical proximity and survives because the Englishman assumes the physical proximity will not continue.
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Zadie Smith |
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7be8bc8
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It is a long walk to table twelve. Not in distance, it is only twenty metres in distance, but it is a long walk through the thick smells and the loud voices and the demands; through the cries of Englishmen; past table two, where the ashtray is full and must be cupped by another ashtray, lifted silently and switched for the new ashtray with perfect insouciance; stopping at table four, where there is an unidentifiable dish that was not ordere..
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Zadie Smith |
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34187ff
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All I write is, to me, sentimental. A book which doesn't leave people either happier or better than it found them, which doesn't add some permanent treasure to the world, isn't worth doing... This is my "theory", and I maintain it's sentimental - at all events it isn't Flaubert's. How can he fag himself to write "Un Coeur Simple"?"
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Zadie Smith |
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6b94f83
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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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Zadie Smith |
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357f7e9
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And it goes to prove what has been said of immigrants many times before now; they are resourceful; they make do. They use what they can when they can. Because we often imagine that immigrants are constantly on the move, footloose, able to change course at any moment, able to employ their legendary resourcefulness at every turn. We have been told of the resourcefulness of Mr Schmutters, or the foot-loosity of Mr Banajii, who sail into Ellis ..
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Zadie Smith |
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aae4c08
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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.
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Zadie Smith |