Zadie Smith Quotes

... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.

Zadie Smith

• People
• Good
• Pain
• Smile
• Distance
• Eyebrows

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Quotes to Explore

• You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Know
  • Simple

• I think I know a thing or two about the way people love, but I don't know anything about hatred, psychosis, cruelty. Or maybe I don't have the guts to admit that I do.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Think
  • Know

• Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Good
  • Space

• 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.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Love
  • Memories

• A lot of women, when they're young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. It's easy to be friends when everyone's 18.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Good
  • Women
  • Friends

• Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Writing
  • Way
  • Expressing

• 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.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Want
  • Day
  • Roots

• I just realized quite early on that I'm not going to be the type who can write a novel every two years. I think you need to feel an urgency about the act. Otherwise, when you read it, you feel no urgency, either. So I don't write unless I really feel I need to, and that's a luxury.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Think
  • Write
  • Luxury

• It might be useful to distinguish between pleasure and joy. But maybe everybody does this very easily, all the time, and only I am confused.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Joy
  • Pleasure
  • Confused

• When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Love
  • Dark
  • Laughter

• The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Heart
  • War
  • Argument

• I wrote 'White Teeth' in the late nineties. I didn't really feel trepidatious about it. It was a different time.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Time
  • Different
  • White

• This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Work
  • Children
  • Experience

• 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.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• 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.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Life
  • Live

• Normally, young writers have all the time in the world and they don't always use it well.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Time
  • World
  • Young

• World makers, social network makers, ask one question first: 'How can I do it?'

  

  Zadie Smith
  • World
  • Question
  • First

• One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • You
  • Identity
  • Search

• The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Real
  • Artist
  • Rap

• Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • World
  • Writing
  • Today

• I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Great
  • Book

• A lot of people seem to feel that joy is only the most intense version of pleasure, arrived at by the same road - you simply have to go a little further down the track. That has not been my experience.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Experience
  • Joy

• Women often have a great need to portray themselves as sympathetic and pleasing, but we're also dark people with dark thoughts.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Great
  • Women

• I recognize myself to be an intensely naive person. Most novelists are, despite frequent pretensions to deep socio-political insight.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • Political
  • Myself
  • Deep