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93 quotes by Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith Smith announcing the 2010 National Book Critics Circle award finalists in fiction. Born Sadie Smith (1975-10-25) 25 October 1975 (age 39) Brent, London, England Occupation Novelist, professor of creative writing Nationality British Alma mater King's College, Cambridge Period 2000–present Literary movement Realism, postmodernism, hysterical realism Zadie Smith's voice Sorry, your browser either has JavaScript disabled or...
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Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

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

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

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I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it.

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

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

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

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Like all readers, I want my limits to be drawn by my own sensibilities, not by my melanin count.

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Oh yes, my generation liked to be in some pain when they read. The harder it was, the more good we believed it was doing us.

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The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.

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There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right.

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

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

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