Quotes by Zadie Smith

You cant state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality.

My feeling is, having lived in different classes, that people want equality of opportunity... thats the thing that makes me despair: the idea that people arent given equality of opportunity.

I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.

It seems to me that we often commit ourselves wholly to something while knowing almost nothing concrete about it. Another word for that, I suppose, is faith.

A lot of women, when theyre young, feel they have very good friends, and find later on that friendship is complicated. Its easy to be friends when everyones 18.

My life is black and white and mixed. My mothers a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - its not an affectation. Its also the lives of millions of people throughout the world.

“She measured time in pages. Half an hour, to her, meant ten pages read, or fourteen, depending on the size of the type, and when you think of time in this way there isn’t time for anything else.”

“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.”

“Time is how you spend your love.”