Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
reader
Learning how to be a good reader is what makes you a writer.
computer internet disconnected
Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.
stories ends
The end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
simple editing secret
The secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become its reader instead of its writer.
sole dictionary
I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.
achievement honour
Don't confuse honours with achievement.
life two different
Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
writing pages matter
Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation’. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle’. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
future past perfect
The past is always tense, the future perfect.
dream new-year phones
This, after all, was the month in which families began tightening and closing and sealing; from Thanksgiving to the New Year, everybody's world contracted, day by day, into the microcosmic single festive household, each with its own rituals and obsessions, rules and dreams. You didn't feel you could call people. They didn't feel they could phone you. How does one cry for help from these seasonal prisons?
Time is how you spend your love.
writing space people
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
people looks use
When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.
writing healthy noise
And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. But in another way, when I'm writing, what it's about for me is being good on the page. None of that noise could change the way I feel about my writing. Which is not always particularly positive.