About Zadie Smith: Zadie Smith is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer.
If you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn't be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage.
I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slow...
People with children will know this: when the childcare is over, it's over on the dot. You immediately have to go into child mode; there's no down time.
It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused.
It seems that if you put people on paper and move them through time, you cannot help but talk about ethics, because the ethical realm exists nowhere if not here: in the consequences of human actions as they unfold in time, and the multiple interpreti...
English writing tends to fall into two categories - the big, baggy epic novel or the fairly controlled, tidy novel. For a long time, I was a fan of the big, baggy novel, but there's definitely an advantage to having a little bit more control.
Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.
I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.
Books are not brands. Some people are very willing to see themselves as a brand, but you can't be a certain type of writer to a certain type of person all the time. It will kill you.
Don't we all know why nerds do what they do? To get money, which leads to popularity, which leads to girls.
English, as a subject, never really got over its upstart nature. It tries to bulk itself up with hopeless jargon and specious complexity, tries to imitate subjects it can never be.
I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.
I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. I'm too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.
I think I know a thing or two about the way people love, but I don't know anything about hatred, psychosis, cruelty. Or maybe I don't have the guts to admit that I do.
Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand - but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
Young people understand the world. They should be listened to on matters of politics and world organization. But they know nothing of their own lives.
The library was the place I went to find out what there was to know. It was absolutely essential.
