Author

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

From Zadie Smith

I love to dance, and sing - in the shower, not in public. I'm too old to go raving, but my fondest memories are of that kind of thing - dancing, with lots of people, outside if possible.

From Zadie Smith

When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.

From Zadie Smith

If you asked me if I wanted more joyful experiences in my life, I wouldn't be at all sure I did, exactly because it proves such a difficult emotion to manage.

From Zadie Smith

I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them; most writers groups moonlight as support groups for the kind of people who think that writing is therapeutic. Writing is the exact opposite of therapy.

From Zadie Smith

I tap danced for ten years before I began to understand people don't make musicals anymore. All I wanted to do was be at MGM working for Arthur Freed or Gene Kelly or Vincent Minelli. Historical and geographical constraints made this impossible. Slowly but surely the pen became mightier than the double pick-up time step with shuffle.

From Zadie Smith

I like books that expose me to people unlike me and books that do battle against caricature or simplification. That, to me, is the heroic in fiction.

From Zadie Smith

You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

From Zadie Smith

As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find out about the last day of WWII or the roots of the Indian Mutiny, get thee to a books catalogue.

From Zadie Smith

I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy.

From Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith

Notable Quotes

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