Zadie Smith Quotes

“Nowadays, I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.”

“The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.”

“English fiction was something I loved growing up, and it changed my life - it changed the trajectory of my life.”

“When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.”

“I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.”

“Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.”

“I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely.”

“Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.”

“We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.”

“Working with great writers can be humbling and frightening, but it can also change you for good, forever.”

“Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.”

“I'm always a bit suspicious of writers who have the gift of the gab.”

“I'm most honest about writing when I'm talking to family or friends, not to newspapers.”

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

“Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.”

“You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.”

“Your mid-thirties is a good time because you know a fair amount, you have some self-control.”

“I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate.”

“Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.”

“I wrote "White Teeth" in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.”

“I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.”

“It's a funny thing about rap, that when you say "I" into the microphone, it's like a public confession. It's very strange.”