About Zadie Smith: Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer.
You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead.
Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.
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.
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 ...
I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources.
There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route.
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...
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 understan...
The mantra of the makeover junkie, sucking it in, letting it out; unwilling to settle for genetic fate; waiting instead for her transformation...
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?
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...
More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.
It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth that can be lived with. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff that comes from the streams...
Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house.
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
Full stories are as rare as honesty.
That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.
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.
