606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

She was that age. Whatever she said burst like genius into centuries of silence. Whatever she touched was the first stroke of its kind. Whatever she believed was not formed by faith but carved from certainty. Whatever she thought was the first time such a thought had ever been thunk.

Pulchritude – beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.

You’re a library of me.

Two people creating the time of their own lives, protected somehow by love, not ignorant of history but not deformed by it, either.

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.

The thing I feared was no longer my parents’ authority over me but that they might haul out into the open their own intimate fears, their melancholy and regrets.

Faced with the same reality, we in the West tend to opt for a stiff drink instead. But people will insist upon shooting us sideways glances and saying things like, “It’s two o’clock in the afternoon!” and so we put down our glasses and sigh.

Can’t a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite?

It’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.