606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

you’re lucky that you find life so easy, Felix. You’re lucky that you’re happy, that you know how to be happy, that you’re a good person- and you want everyone to be happy and good because you are, and to find things easy because you do. Do it ever occur to you some people might not find life as easy to live as you do?

Maybe nothing that happens upon stolen ground can expect a happy ending.

E in passato, si chiese Archie, la gente imbrogliava di meno? Era piu' onesta, lasciava la porta di casa aperta, affidava i figli ai vicini, faceva visite agli amici, aveva il conto aperto con il macellaio?

It's about time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings. Clara was from somewhere. She had roots.

oh he loves her, just as the English loved India & Africa & Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly. but maybe it is just the scenery that is wrong. maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending.

I wrote an article for The Women's Earth recently. I described a school I worked in where I gave all the children a potted spider plant and told them to look after it for a week like a daddy or mommy looks after a baby. Each child chose which parent they were going to emulate. This lovely little Jamaican boy, Winston, chose his daddy. The next week his mother phoned and asked why I'd asked Winston to feed his plant Pepsi and put it in front of the television.

Hör mal: Du bist ein cleveres Mädchen, Irie. Aber man hat dir allen möglichen Scheiß beigebracht. Du musst dic selbst umerziehen. Deinen eigenen Weg erkennen, mit dieser sklavischen Bewunderung aufhören und endlich richtig leben lernen, Irie. Such dir 'ne Freundin, such dir 'nen Freund, aber lerne leben.

New York just expects so much from a girl—acts like it can’t stand even the idea of a wasted talent or opportunity. . . . Rome says: enjoy me. London: survive me. New York: gimme all you got. What a thrilling proposition! The chance to be “all that you might be.” Such a thrill—until it becomes a burden.

On her first day at the school her mother had explained to her she was about to enter the devil's lair, filled her satchel with two hundred copies of the Watchtower, and instructed her to go do the Lord's work