606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

I worked regularly and kept a journal; I saw that creation was an accretive process which couldn’t be hurried, and which involved patience and, primarily, love. I felt more solid myself, and not as if my mind were just a kind of cinema for myriad impressions and emotions to flicker through.

I’m very attracted to exile literature – particularly Nabokov – exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.

When everyone’s building a fence, isn’t it a true fool who lives out in the open?

Novels are not about expressing yourself, they’re about something beautiful, funny, clever and organic. Self-expression? Go and ring a bell in a yard if you want to express yourself.

No one was more liberal than anyone else anywhere anyway. It was only that here, in Willesden, there was just not enough of any one thing to gang up against any other thing and send it running to the cellars while windows were smashed.

The middle of a novel is a state of mind. Strange things happen in it. Time collapses.

13.5 Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan’s academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.

It’s easy to confuse a woman for a philosophy.

I did come out with two invaluable intimations. Talking to yourself can be useful. And writing means being overheard.