Zadie Smith Quotes

Zadie Adeline Smith

Zadie Adeline Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short-story writer. Her debut novel, White Teeth, immediately became a best-seller and won a number of awards. (Zadie Smith Quotes)

“A truth was being revealed to me: that I had always tried to attach myself to the light of other people, that I had never had any light of my own. I experienced myself as a kind of shadow.”
Zadie Smith

“And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.”
Zadie Smith

“Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.”
Zadie Smith

“Generally, women can’t do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.”
Zadie Smith

“Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.”
Zadie Smith

“I am seized by two contradictory feelings: there is so much beauty in the world it is incredible that we are ever miserable for a moment; there is so much shit in the world that it is incredible we are ever happy for a moment.”
Zadie Smith

“I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.”
Zadie Smith

“I don’t ask myself what did I live for, said Carlene strongly. That is a man’s question. I ask whom did I live for.”
Zadie Smith

“If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.”
Zadie Smith

“In a whisper he began begging for—and, as the sun set, received—the concession people always beg for: a little more time.”
Zadie Smithv

“In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution – is not my solution.”
Zadie Smith

“It’s easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy”
Zadie Smith

“Not everyone wants this conventional little life you’re rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire. And when it’s time for me to go I fully intend to roll off my one-person dinghy into the flames and be consumed. I’m not afraid.”
Zadie Smith

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

“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 are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.”
Zadie Smith

“People aren’t poor because they make bad choices. They make bad choices because they’re poor.”
Zadie Smith

“She did what girls generally do when they don’t feel the part: she dressed it instead.”
Zadie Smith

“She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.”
Zadie Smith

“She measured time in pages. Half an hour, to her, meant ten pages read, or fourteen, depending on the size of the type, and when you think of time in this way there isn’t time for anything else.”
Zadie Smith

“She wore her sexuality with an older woman’s ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.”
Zadie Smith

“Sometimes I wonder if people don’t want freedom as much as they want meaning.”
Zadie Smith

“Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.”
Zadie Smith

“Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one’s own resources.”
Zadie Smith

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”
Zadie Smith

“The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.”
Zadie Smith

“The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.”
Zadie Smith

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”
Zadie Smith

“The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.”
Zadie Smith

“Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.”
Zadie Smith

“There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route.”
Zadie Smith

“These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers – who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.”
Zadie Smith

“They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.”
Zadie Smith