Zadie Smith Quotes

I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.

Zadie Smith

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Quotes to Explore

• A rolling stone gathers no moss, but it gains a certain polish.

  

  Oliver Herford
  • Stone
  • Rolling
  • Moss

• The undisturbed coastal plain is home to a wide variety of plants and animals and is the only wilderness sanctuary in North America that protects a complete range of the arctic ecosystem.

  

  Dan Lipinski
  • Home
  • America
  • Wilderness

• My vision for the future always centers around our children - it always centers around our children. So anytime anybody asks me what are the three most important issues facing the Congress, I always say the same thing: 'Our children, our children, our children.'

  

  Nancy Pelosi
  • Important
  • Children
  • Future

• There is a humanitarian impulse that one aspires to and there are days when one doesn't do it very well.

  

  Ralph Fiennes
  • Very
  • Days
  • Humanitarian

• I have had wrinkles on my forehead and my smile line since I was a kid. I see them in my own kids. I know what they're going to look like. So it's kind of like that's my personality. I feel the older you get, too, the more confident you become just in your own skin.

  

  Faith Hill
  • Kids
  • Kind
  • Personality

• I try to stay focused.

  

  OMI
  • Try
  • Focused
  • Stay Focused

• Holocaust survivors came to Israel in order to establish a new human society where nobody would be able to hurt them just because they're Jewish. This is both a furious and vulnerable message.

  

  Yair Lapid
  • Society
  • Hurt
  • Holocaust

• Be assured those will be thy worst enemies, not to whom thou hast done evil, but who have done evil to thee. And those will be thy best friends, not to whom thou hast done good, but who have done good to thee.

  

  Tacitus
  • Good
  • Done
  • Friends

• The notion that one will not survive a particular catastrophe is, in general terms, a comfort since it is equivalent to abolishing the catastrophe.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Will
  • Comfort
  • Survive

• Names, once they are in common use, quickly become mere sounds, their etymology being buried, like so many of the earth's marvels, beneath the dust of habit.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Earth
  • Habit
  • Common

• I'm not a universalist, and the way I talk about final loss is this: People worship idols - money, whatever. Their humanness gets reshaped around the idol - you become like what you worship. That's one of the basic spiritual laws.

  

  N. T. Wright
  • People
  • Money
  • Spiritual

• I find celebrity really scary.

  

  Kate Ashfield
  • Find
  • Scary
  • Celebrity

• The biggest kick I get is to communicate with those who are exiled from the game - in hospitals, homes, prisons - those who have seldom seen a game, who can't travel to a game, those who are blind.

  

  Jack Buck
  • Game
  • Travel
  • Blind

• A person who suffers from severe locomotor anxiety finds himself in an almost permanent state of mental tension. He wakes in the morning with the anxious expectation of having to go out somewhere in the course of the day.

  

  Karl Abraham
  • Day
  • Morning
  • Anxiety

• I see Baccarat in major gateway cities like Paris, Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong and exotic resort locations.

  

  Barry Sternlicht
  • Like
  • Paris
  • Hong Kong

• The mode by which the inevitable is reached is effort.

  

  Felix Frankfurter
  • Effort
  • Inevitable
  • Mode

• When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, sir, was the primary object.

  

  Patrick Henry
  • Different
  • American
  • America

• Obama is a great man who's just beginning to understand the realities. And I'm not just saying that because he reads my books. I would have voted for him anyway.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Great
  • Man
  • Beginning

• When John Lennon sings, 'Oh, my love/For the first time in my life/My eyes are wide open' - these songs have an intimacy for me that's not just between people, I realize now, not just sexual intimacy. A spiritual intimacy.

  

  Bono U2
  • People
  • Life
  • Time

• Your empire is now like a tyranny: it may have been wrong to take it; it is certainly dangerous to let it go.

  

  Pericles
  • May

• The pianist Cecil Taylor is extremely melodic; the guitarist Derek Bailey is extremely melodic, and Ornette Coleman.

  

  Pat Metheny
  • Guitarist
  • Taylor
  • Coleman

• If you like a person you say 'let's go into business together.' Man is a social animal after all, but such partnerships are fraught with danger.

  

  Brian Tracy
  • Men
  • Business
  • Together

• This is among the few things that can be said about love with any confidence. It is small enough to be contained within the heart but, pull thin, it would drape the entire world.

  

  Nadeem Aslam
  • World
  • Heart
  • Small

• I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.

  

  Zadie Smith
  • People
  • Done
  • Me