606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

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

It’s difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.

But there have always been these people for whom rap language is more scandalous than the urban deprivation rap describes.

E in passato, si chiese Archie, la gente imbrogliava di meno? Era piu’ onesta, lasciava la porta di casa aperta, affidava i figli ai vicini, faceva visite agli amici, aveva il conto aperto con il macellaio?

I once overheard a young white man at a book festival say to his friend, “Have you read the new Kureishi? Same old thing – loads of Indian people.” To which you want to reply, “Have you read the new Franzen? Same old thing – loads of white people.

That there might be any practical divergence between my mother’s situation and her own did not seem to occur to Aimee, and this was one of my earliest lessons in her way of viewing the differences between people, which were never structural or economic but always essentially differences of personality.

In a whisper he began begging for – and, as the sun set, received – the concession people always beg for: a little more time.

I couldn’t afford to be offended.

The fear was respect, the respect, fear. If you didn’t have the fear you had nothing.