606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

Anyone over the age of thirty catching a bus can consider himself a failure.

A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18. It gets harder the older you get, as you make different life choices, as people say in America. A lot of women's friendships begin to founder.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.

There is a kind of desperate need for somebody to tell everyone what to do, which I find really peculiar in America. And then when you tell them, they're not interested, because it's also a country where everybody's opinion is their opinion, and they really don't give a damn what you think. So it's a very odd experience.

It's gotten to a point where everybody is concerned about their rights and nobody is concerned about their duties.

I'm not sure if you're the person for me any more.

Sometimes I think my whole professional life has been based on this hunch I had, early on, that many people feel just as muddled as I do, and might be happy to tag along with me on this search for clarity, for precision. I love that aspect of writing. Nothing makes me happier than to hear a reader say: that’s just what I’ve always felt, but you said it clearly.

Young people understand the world. They should be listened to on matters of politics and world organization. But they know nothing of their own lives.

He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.