Zadie Smith Quotes

Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

Zadie Smith

• Attention
• Drawing
• Circles

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Quotes to Explore

• My parents came to see me in a play at Eton when I was 16. And then, when I said I wanted to try for drama school, they knew there was enough passion there for them to be brave and back me.

  

  Damian Lewis
  • School
  • Parents
  • Passion

• Listen: our culture is saturated with irony whether we know it or not.

  

  Barbara Kruger
  • Culture
  • Know
  • Irony

• I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead.

  

  Samuel Goldwyn
  • Think
  • Funny
  • Should

• As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences.

  

  Omari Hardwick
  • Important
  • American
  • Couple

• My worst expectations never happened.

  

  Barbara Bush
  • Never
  • Worst
  • Expectations

• All the women in my family are very dramatic by themselves. They make the biggest things out of nothing. I think that's where I learned a lot about being emotional.

  

  Jacob Batalon
  • Women
  • Family
  • Think

• The reason I like Portland is the idea of going to a supermarket and knowing there's no way to be recognized. L.A. is so social.

  

  Patrick deWitt
  • Way
  • Like
  • Idea

• To make the child in your own image is a capital crime, for your image is not worth repeating. The child knows this and you know it. Consequently you hate each other.

  

  Karl Shapiro
  • Hate
  • Know
  • Child

• I suppose I have played a lot of put-upon women, but it's never bothered me. They've never been weak – they've always got steel in them.

  

  Olivia Colman
  • Women
  • Never
  • Played

• Never thought acting was something you could make a living at. It wasn't until I was in college, and got a lead in a play, that I began to realize I might just be able to blunder into this profession.

  

  Ed Asner
  • College
  • Thought
  • Acting

• Accept it or not, every star, actor, and director wants to work on larger-than-life films.

  

  Ram Charan
  • Life
  • Work
  • Star

• Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • Long
  • Live
  • Why

• I think Ali was a fan of mine, even though he never said it. A lot of fighters thought I was pretty good. Nobody every really spoke different on that. But a lot of fighters thought I was good so.

  

  Larry Holmes
  • Good
  • Different
  • Think

• I love drag queens... they perform me better than I ever could myself.

  

  Taylor Dane
  • Me
  • Myself
  • Better

• I think that when something happens when you're growing up, like a death or divorce, it does open the world slightly because things aren't as straightforward.

  

  Felicity Jones
  • Up
  • World
  • Death

• My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.

  

  Natalie Babbitt
  • Writing
  • Book
  • Husband

• If we ever find out how the brain works, with all its complexity, then we will be able to build a machine that has consciousness. And if that happens, that is a road to planetary disaster because everything we've thought about ourselves, since the Bronze Age, the Bible, all of that will be gone.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Age
  • Brain
  • Road

• I like to read in the bathtub. Ideally, that bathtub would be located on a small Greek island.

  

  Adam Mansbach
  • Small
  • Like
  • Greek

• I'd like to keep work work and life life. It means you've got your life to come back to, somewhere to come home to at night that isn't invaded by your day.

  

  James McAvoy
  • Life
  • Work
  • Home

• Horseracing already has the highest mortality rate of any sport in the world per capita to the people who do it. If you crash in Nascar you still have a roll bar, and a cage, and a lot of protection. It's built to crash, but if you fall off a racehorse we all know what can happen, so it's tremendously dangerous.

  

  Gary Ross
  • People
  • World
  • Know

• If I can get the audience to connect with the characters emotionally - and they love who they are, they love the larger-than-life situation that they're in, but most of all get the audience invested in the characters - then I always feel like I can sort of put them in the most outrageous circumstances, and the audience is okay to go with that.

  

  James Wan
  • Life

• In true-life dramas, you have to do so much research. It's a big responsibility to make sure things are as correct as possible. In 'Robin Hood', you have more artistic license - it's all action, adventure and reaction. This gives everyone a chance to make their characters their own and to make them believable.

  

  Joanne Froggatt
  • Life
  • True
  • Action

• There were weekends and evening hours. A lot of time went in to defend what proved to be a deceitful action.

  

  F. Thomson Leighton
  • Time
  • Action
  • Lying

• Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Attention
  • Drawing
  • Circles