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7ac02b3
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When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Hallelujah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki had thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day. And then the kid drowned in the Mississippi, recalled Kiki now, looking up from her knees to the colourful painting that hung behind Carlene's empty chair. Jerome had wept: the tears ..
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Zadie Smith |
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0cbedb9
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The lady was old, the lady was ill. It didn't matter what the lady believed.
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Zadie Smith |
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145ed8e
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I'm serious. I don't know how you work like that. My school shit is better organized, and I'm not in the business of World Domination.
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Zadie Smith |
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1f56630
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One of the advantages of loving women, of being loved by women: they will always do things far beyond the call of duty
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Zadie Smith |
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d453460
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Because this is the other thing about immigrants ('fugees, emigres, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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Zadie Smith |
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f1af0d4
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And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.
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Zadie Smith |
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3ba6f7a
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He wanted to meet her for the first time, over and over...He told himself the story that this was the great tragedy of his heart. The great tragedy of his heart was that it always needed to be told a story.
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Zadie Smith |
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75626c3
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Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable.
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prejudice
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Zadie Smith |
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8906bb9
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Don't you think they're as bored as you are? You think you're somebody special? You think I wake up everyday so happy to see you? You're a snob, just in the other way. Do you think you are the only one who wants something else? Another life?
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happiness
life
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Zadie Smith |
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0d638f8
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Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.
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Zadie Smith |
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e2cc078
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you're lucky that you find life so easy, Felix. You're lucky that you're happy, that you know how to be happy, that you're a good person- and you want everyone to be happy and good because you are, and to find things easy because you do. Do it ever occur to you some people might not find life as easy to live as you do?
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zadie-smith
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Zadie Smith |
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5855412
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But elegance attracted me. I liked the way it hid pain. One
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Zadie Smith |
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ea39088
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But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?
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Zadie Smith |
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c25a6f8
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I didn't understand yet that the beauty was part of the boredom.
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Zadie Smith |
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0b672f0
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He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people's parents. Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.
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Zadie Smith |
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f1c8cbb
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It's like that quote: 'If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.' The choice between a duty or a principle, you know?
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country
principle
duty
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Zadie Smith |
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332b93b
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They caught up with each other's news casually, leaving long, cosy gaps of silence in which to go to work on their muffins and coffees. Jerome - after two months of having to be witty and brilliant in a strange town among strangers - appreciated the gift of it. People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this too was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. ~ on the comforts of ..
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Zadie Smith |
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6901fa0
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A minute later, the young Turk and Howard parted on frosty terms, not much warmed by Howard's twenty-pence tip, the only extra change he had in his pocket. It is on journeys like this - where one is so horribly misunderstood - that you find yourself longing for home, that place where you are entirely understood, for better or for worse.
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Zadie Smith |
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0f37826
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So there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn't drag ancient history around like a ball and chain. So there were men who were not neck-deep and sinking in the quagmire of the past.
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Zadie Smith |
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6b2cd99
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They were married before they were friends, which is another way of saying: Their marriage was the occasion of their friendship. They were married before they noticed many small differences in background, aspiration, education, ambition. (...) Noting such differences, Leah was in some sense disappointed in herself that they did not cause real conflict between them. It was hard to get used to the fact that the pleasure her body found in his,..
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sex
marriage
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Zadie Smith |
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4ac988a
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It was in the shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love.
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Zadie Smith |
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bf40eb9
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The fear was respect, the respect, fear. If you didn't have the fear you had nothing.
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Zadie Smith |
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1ff251c
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If someone asked her just then what memory was, what the of memory was, she would say this: the street you were on when you first jumped in a pile of dead leaves. She was walking it right now. With every fresh crunch came the memory of previous crunches. She was permeated by familiar smells: wet woodchip and gravel around the base of the tree, newly laid turd underneath the cover of soggy leaves. She was moved by these sensations.
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Zadie Smith |
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c4e4b4c
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She lost God so smoothly and painlessly she had to wonder what she'd ever meant by the word.
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Zadie Smith |
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06ed26b
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fy bnt ljyl ljdyd, hl m zln yrdn 'n ykn mrGwbt bhdhh lshd@? hl m zln yjw`n 'nfshn, wm zln yqr'n lmjlt lnsy'y@ lty tkrh lns bmnthy lwDwH, wm zln yqT`n 'nfshn bskkyn SGyr@ fy 'mkn b`yd@ `n l`ywn lmutaraqib@, wm zln yuzayfn sh`wrhn blwSwl ly l'wrjzm m` rjl ykrhn, wm zln ykdhbn `ly ljmy` `n kl shy'?
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zadie
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zadie smith |
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f6346f3
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Archie says -Science- the same way he says -Modern-, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them.
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Zadie Smith |
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07d24b4
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I remember there was always a girl with a secret, with something furtive and broken in her, and walking through the village with Aimee, entering people's homes, shaking their hands, accepting their food and drink, being hugged by their children, I often thought I saw her again, this girl who lives everywhere and at all times in history, who is sweeping the yard or pouring out tea or carrying somebody else's baby on her hip and looking over ..
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Zadie Smith |
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458379c
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I don't want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I'm not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies." She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. "You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put ..
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sexism
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Zadie Smith |
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aee32d3
|
Girls either wanted him or wanted to improve him, but most often a combination of the two. They wanted to improve him until he justified the amount they wanted him.
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love
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Zadie Smith |
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e694851
|
A little white woman, . . . [a] tiny little white woman I could fit in my pocket.' . . . 'And I don't know why I'm surprised. You don't even notice it - you never notice. You think it's normal. Everywhere we go, I'm alone in this... this sea of white. I barely know any black folk any more, Howie. My whole life is white. I don't see any black folk unless they be cleaning under my feet in the fucking cafe in your fucking college. Or pushing a..
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women
caucasian
on-beauty
zadie-smith
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Zadie Smith |
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91e699f
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The fact is if we followed the history of every little country in this world--in its dramatic as well as its quiet times--we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures, like swimming. Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?
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Zadie Smith |
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1f06128
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The experience of listening to an hour's music you barely know in a dead language you do not understand is a strange falling and rising experience. For minutes at a time you are walking deep into it, you seem to understand. Then, without knowing how or when exactly, you discover you have wandered away, bored or tired from the effort, and now you are nowhere near the music.
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Zadie Smith |
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2f1780a
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The nineties, ecstatic decade!
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Zadie Smith |
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760056c
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A neutral place. The chances of finding one these days are slim, maybe even slimmer than Archie's pinball trick. The sheer quantity of shit that must be wiped off the slate if we are to start again as new. Race. Land. Ownership. Faith. Theft. Blood. And more blood. And more. And not only must the place be neutral, but the messenger who takes you to the place, and the messenger who sends the messenger. There are no people or places like that..
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Zadie Smith |
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52a1387
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It was a competition in agony. Like rich women in posh restaurants ordering ever-smaller salads.
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Zadie Smith |
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a95437d
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And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest, and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbors, pay social calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They need it.
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past
old
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Zadie Smith |
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6601ffa
|
She struggled to think of anyone besides perhaps James Baldwin and Jesus who had experiences the profound isolation and loenliness she now knew to be the one and only true reality of this world.
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Zadie Smith |
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a68ae4c
|
I once overheard a young white man at a book festival say to his friend, "Have you read the new Kureishi? Same old thing--loads of Indian people." To which you want to reply, "Have you read the new Franzen? Same old thing--loads of white people." --
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Zadie Smith |
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1426cd2
|
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."
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Zadie Smith |
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b172276
|
Blimey, thought Kelvin, what an eye-to-face ratio. When you want to say something delicate, you don't want that eye-to-face ration staring up at you. Big eyes, like a child's or a baby seal's; the physiognomy of innocence--looking at Archie Jones is like looking at something that expects to be clubbed round the head any second.
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Zadie Smith |
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a147844
|
I got something to tell you," said Keisha Blake, disguising her voice with her voice."
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Zadie Smith |
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6eae09e
|
But he had underestimated the strangeness of talking about the future of his life with someone for whom the future still seemed unbounded: a pleasure palace of choices, with infinite doors, in which only a fool would spend his time trapped in one room.
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Zadie Smith |
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ba68e8c
|
It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
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pure
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Zadie Smith |
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ed758ee
|
There are so many different ways to be poor,
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Zadie Smith |