606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

He was bookish, she was not; he was theoretical, she political. She called a rose a rose. He called it an accumulation of cultural and biological constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of nature/artifice.

The object of the passion is just an accessory to the passion itself.

In my situation, every time I write a sentence, I'm thinking not only of the people I ended up in college with but my siblings, my family, my school friends, the people from my neighborhood. I've come to realize that this is an advantage, really: it keeps you on your toes.

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

The ideal reader cannot sleep when holding the writer he was meant to be with.

We cannot love something solely because it has been ignored. It must also be worthy of our attention.

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.