606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

... the truth is that not enough carriers of this virus have ever been willing to risk the potential loss of any aspect of their social capital to find out what kind of America might lie on the other side of segregation. They are very happy to "blackout" their social media for a day, to read all-black books, and "educate" themselves about black issues — as long as this education does not occur in the form of actual black children attending their actual schools.

Extreme inequality fractures communities, and after a while the cracks gape so wide the whole edifice comes tumbling down.

Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison.

No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.

You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead.

Strange inversions proliferate.

Samad! My mouth is like the grave! Whatever is told to me dies with me."Whatever was told to Zinat invariably lit up the telephone network, rebounded off aerials, radio waves, and satellites along the way, picked up finally by advanced alien civilizations as it bounced through the atmosphere of planets far removed from this one.

... - I couldn't help but notice the placidity of a small female household. In Tracey's home, disappointment in the man was ancient history: they never really had any hope in him, for he had almost never been at home.

To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it, for later use.