606 Quotes by Zadie Smith

I think Seneca is right: life feels longer the more you engage with it.

My evidence – such as it is – is almost always intimate. I feel this – do you? I’m struck by this thought – are you?

And then she reverses direction and heads straight for Willesden Bookshop, an independent shop that rents space from the council and provides – no matter what Brent Council may claim – an essential local service. It is run by Helen. Helen is an essential local person. I would characterize her essentialness in the following way: ‘Giving the people what they didn’t know they wanted.’ Important category.

But what does soulful even mean? The dictionary has it this way: “expressing or appearing to express deep and often sorrowful feeling.” The culturally black meaning adds several more shades of color. First shade: soulfulness is sorrowful feeling transformed into something beautiful, creative and self-renewing, and – as it reaches a pitch – ecstatic. It is an alchemy of pain.

A writer’s duty is to register what it is like for him or her to be in the world.

At least then, we have the satisfaction of a little short-term pleasure instead of a lifetime of feeling inadequate.

And drunk men take dares like they take breaths.

This because it is never really very cold in England. It is drizzly, and the wind will blow; hail happens, and there is a breed of Tuesday in January in which time creeps and no light comes and the air is full of water and nobody really loves anybody, but still a decent jumper and a waxen jacket lined with wool is sufficient for every weather England’s got to give.

People don’t settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.