606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her.""Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.

Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets... one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to becoming uninvolved.

I couldn't imagine her leaving this world without ripping its fabric.

Watching this manic desire to make or grow or do 'something', that now seems to be consuming everybody, I do feel comforted to discover I'm not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it.

Maybe a certain kind of ignorance was the condition. Into the pure nothingness of my non-knowledge something sublime (an event?) beyond (beneath?) consciousness was able to occur.

I am a citizen as well as an individual soul and one of the things citizenship teaches us, over the long stretch, is that there is no perfectibility in human affairs.

He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.

maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending

And then she reverses direction and heads straight for Willesden Bookshop, an independent shop that rents space from the council and provides--no matter what Brent Council may claim--an essential local service. It is run by Helen. Helen is an essential local person. I would characterize her essentialness in the following way: 'Giving the people what they didn't know they wanted.' Important category.