Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith FRSL is an English novelist, essayist, and short story writer...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth25 October 1975
books encourage hear intend meant
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.
books love
When I think of the books I love, there's always a little laughter in the dark.
book reading people
Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
book giving feelings
I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated.
book roots want
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.
book people fiction
All my books are made up of other books. They're all deeply structured on other fiction, because I was a student in fiction and I didn't have much actual living to draw on. I suspect a lot of other people's novels are like that, too, though they might be slower to talk about it.
mistake book writing
If you're going to write a good book, you have to make mistakes and you have to not be so cautious all the time.
book people battle
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.
book house mum
I don't keep any copies of my books in the house - they go to my mum's flat. I don't like them around.
book people telling-the-truth
It's difficult to tell the truth about how a book begins. The truth, as far as it can be presented to other people, is either wholly banal or too intimate.
book ambition writing
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.
children book writing
First rule of writing: When still a child, make sure you read a lot of books. Spend more time doing this than anything else.
comic english
There is no bigger crime, in the English comic novel, than thinking you are right.
anathema life somebody unreal
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.