Quotes by Zadie Smith

Time is how you spend your love.

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel -- before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.

Cos if its encyclopedias weve got enough, like, information... and if its God, youve got the wrong house.

Its still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other peoples, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.

USURY: Everybodys looking for the job in which you never have to pay anyone their pound of flesh. Self-employed nirvana. A lot of artists like to think of themselves as uncompromising; a lot of management consultants wont tell you what they do until theyve sunk five pints. I dont think anybody should give themselves air just because they dont have to hand over a pound of flesh every day at 5pm, and I dont think anyone should beat themselves with broken glass because they do. If youre an artist, well, good for you. Thank your lucky stars every evening and dance in the garden with the fairies. But dont fool yourself that you occupy some kind of higher moral ground. You have to work for that. Writing a few lines, painting a pretty picture - that just wont do it.

Q: Where and when do you do your writing? A: Any small room with no natural light will do. As for when, I have no particular schedules... afternoons are best, but Im too lethargic for any real regime. When Im in the flow of something I can do a regular 9 to 5; when I dont know where Im going with an idea, Im lucky if I do two hours of productive work. There is nothing more off-putting to a would-be novelist to hear about how so-and-so wakes up at four in the a.m, walks the dog, drinks three liters of black coffee and then writes 3,000 words a day, or that some other asshole only works half an hour every two weeks, does fifty press-ups and stands on his head before and after the creative moment. I remember reading that kind of stuff in profiles like this and becoming convinced everything I was doing was wrong. Whats the American phrase? If it aint broke...

We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution---it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad---peace be upon Him!---tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be.

When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.

She was the kind of person who never gave you enough time to miss her.

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

She wore her sexuality with an older womans ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.

Right. I look fine. Except I dont, said Zora, tugging sadly at her mans nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldnt be able to protect them from self-disgust. To that end she had tried banning television in the early years, and never had a lipstick or a womans magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kikis knowledge, but these and other precautionary measures had made no difference. It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies-- it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.

Boys are just boys after all, but sometimes girls really seem to be the turn of a pale wrist, or the sudden jut of a hip, or a clutch of very dark hair falling across a freckled forehead. Im not saying thats what they really are. Im just saying sometimes it seems that way, and that those details (a thigh mole, a full face flush, a scar the precise shape and size of a cashew nut) are so many hooks waiting to land you.

- You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I dont, said Zora, tugging sadly at her mans nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldnt be able to protect them from self-disgust.

Last year, when Zora was a freshman, sophomores had seemed altogether a different kind of human: so very definite in their tastes and opinions, in ther loves and ideas. Zora woke up this morning hopeful that a transformation of this kind might have visited her in the night, but, finding it hadnt, she did what girls generally do when they dont feel the part: she dressed it instead.

A little white woman, . . . [a] tiny little white woman I could fit in my pocket.’ . . . ‘And I don’t know why I’m surprised. You don’t even notice it – you never notice. You think it’s normal. Everywhere we go, I’m alone in this… this sea of white. I barely know any black folk any more, Howie. My whole life is white. I don’t see any black folk unless they be cleaning under my feet in the fucking café in your fucking college. Or pushing a fucking hospital bed through a corridor . . . ‘I gave up my life for you. I don’t even know who I am any more.’ . . . ‘Could you have found anybody less like me if you’d scoured the earth? . . . My leg weighs more than that woman. What have you made me look like in front of everybody in this town? You married a big black bitch and you run off with a fucking leprechaun?

And its time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings.