606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

It just goes to show,’ said Alsana, revealing her English tongue, “you go back and back and back and it’s still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

Desperation, weakness, vulnerability – these things will always be exploited. You need to protect the weak, ring-fence them, with something far stronger than empathy.

You’re next. It’s the next thing. Next stop Kilburn Station. The doors fold inwards, urban insect closing its wings.

It’s a funny thing about rap, that when you say ‘I’ into the microphone, it’s like a public confession. It’s very strange.

She could not do distress. Anger was so much easier. And quicker and harder and better. If I start crying, I’ll never stop –you hear people say that; Kiki heard people say it all the time in the hospital. A backlog of sadness for which there would never be sufficient time.

I gather sentences round, quotations, the literary equivalent of a cheerleading squad. Except that analogy’s screwy – cheerleaders cheer. I put up placards that make me feel bad.

Well, you can’t make old friends.

But like a lot of people whose vocation it is to change the world he proved to be, in person, outrageously petty.

Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it’s Allah’s turn or his own.