46005. “It had to do with emotion. Whatever I was feeling I was able to express very clearly, I could “put it over.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
46004. “My father was sent to get the shoes. The pink of the leather turned out to be a lighter shade than I’d hoped, it looked like the underside of a kitten, and the sole was a dirty gray cat’s tongue, and there were no long pink satin ribbons to criss-cross over the ankles, no, only a sad little elastic strap which my father had sewn on himself.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
46003. “I was completely unreachable, for the first time in years. It gave me an unexpected but not unpleasant sense of stillness, of being outside of time: it reminded me somehow of childhood.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
46002. “I knew there was something not quite right about her rigid notions—black music, white music—that there must be a world somewhere in which the two combined.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
46001. “It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
46000. “People like us, we can’t be nostalgic. We’ve no home in the past. Nostalgia is a luxury.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45999. “Peele gets to the core of what contemporary entitlement looks like—concern with one’s personal rights combined with non-interest in one’s duties” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45998. “Nobody seemed sure if it was the last ferry. We waited. Time passed, the sky turned pink.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45997. “The river split this finger of land in half throughout its length, and the airport was on the other side.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45996. “The only means I have to stop ignorant snobs from behaving toward genre fiction with snobbish ignorance is to not reinforce their ignorance and snobbery by lying and saying that when I write SF it isn’t SF, but to tell them more or less patiently for forty or fifty years that they are wrong to exclude SF and fantasy from literature, and proving my argument by writing well”).” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45995. “In England, we once had an insulting name for such people: trimmers. In the mid-1600s, a trimmer was any politician who attempted to straddle the reviled middle ground between Cavalier and Roundhead, Parliament and the Crown; to call a man a trimmer was to accuse him of being insufficiently committed to an ideology.” ― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays April 1, 2022
45994. “It was a garden of abundance and decay: the tomatoes were too ripe, the marijuana too strong, woodlice were hiding under everything.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45993. “It’s only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries—not schools or hospitals, libraries—could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve—twin poles of our political mind—were easily and naturally united.” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45992. “Libraries are not failing ‘because they are libraries’. Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay.” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45991. “But asking why rappers always talk about their stuff is like asking why Milton is forever listing the attributes of heavenly armies. Because boasting is a formal condition of the epic form.” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45988. “I didn’t know what to do with all of the sadness. A hundred and fifty years! Do you have any idea how long a hundred and fifty years is in the family of man? She clicked her fingers, and I thought of Miss Isabel, counting children in for the beats of a dance. That long, she said.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45987. “Now, another way to think about this is that Shakespeare’s ego was so very insatiable he thought he could speak for everybody: a black duke, a transvestite girl, a carefree prince, a mad king. But we tend not to think of it that way, in Britain, instead we consider Shakespeare’s breed of impersonality among the highest literary virtues.” ― Zadie Smith, Feel Free: Essays April 1, 2022
45986. “There was a sense in which she couldn’t quite believe in violence, as if it were, in her view, too stupid to be real. I knew—from Lambert only—that her own childhood had been full of violence, emotional and physical, but she rarely referred to it other than calling it “that nonsense,” or sometimes “those ridiculous people,” because when she ascended to the life of the mind everything that was not the life of the mind stopped existing for her.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time April 1, 2022
45985. “It’s such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.” ― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays March 29, 2022
45984. “We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45983. “Maybe it doesn’t matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself.” ― Zadie Smith, NW March 29, 2022
45982. “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.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45981. “I find it impossible to experience either pride or shame over accidents of genetics in which I had no active part. I’m not necessarily proud to be female. I am not even proud to be human—I only love to be so.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45980. “Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.” ― Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man March 29, 2022
45979. “What do we want from our mothers when we are children? Complete submission. Oh, it’s very nice and rational and respectable to say that a woman has every right to her life, to her ambitions, to her needs, and so on–it’s what I’ve always demanded myself–but as a child, no, the truth is it’s a war of attrition, rationality doesn’t come into it, not one bit, all you want from your mother is that she once and for all admit that she is your mother and only your mother, and that her battle with the rest of life is over. She has to lay down arms and come to you. And if she doesn’t do it, then it’s really a war, and it was a war between my mother and me. Only as an adult did I come to truly admire her–especially in the last, painful years of her life–for all that she had done to claw some space in this world for herself.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time March 29, 2022
45978. “And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45977. “He was having an odd paternal rush, a blood surge that was also about blood and was presently hunting through Howard’s expansive intelligence to find words that would more effectively express something like don’t walk in front of cars take care and be good and don’t hurt or be hurt and don’t live in a way that makes you feel dead and don’t betray anybody or yourself and take care of what matters and please don’t and please remember and make sure” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45976. “He had her in his heart, but not always in his mind.” ― Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man March 29, 2022
45975. “Sometimes I wonder if people don’t want freedom as much as they want meaning.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time March 29, 2022
45974. “Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one’s own resources.” ― Zadie Smith, NW March 29, 2022
45973. “People don’t settle for people. They resolve to be with them. It takes faith. You draw a circle in the sand and agree to stand in it and believe in it.” ― Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man March 29, 2022
45971. “Jerome said, It’s like, a family doesn’t work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45969. “- You look fine. – Right. I look fine. Except I don’t, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t be able to protect them from self-disgust. ” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45968. “This is what a woman is: unadorned, after children and work and age, and experience-these are the marks of living.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45966. “People aren’t poor because they make bad choices. They make bad choices because they’re poor.” ― Zadie Smith, Swing Time March 29, 2022
45965. “Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie … and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45964. “She represents love, beauty, purity, the ideal female and the moon…and she’s the mystère of jealousy, vengeance and discord, AND, on the other hand, of love, perpetual help, goodwill, health, beauty and fortune.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45963. “Pulchritude–beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45962. “… don’t ever underestimate people, don’t ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own… Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinéma vérité, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45961. “These days, it feels to me like you make a devil’s pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started… but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers – who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45959. “Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45957. “This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45956. “They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45955. “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. I’m not saying that’s what they really are. I’m 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.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45954. “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 people’s, 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.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45953. “Nowadays I know the true reason I read is to feel less alone, to make a connection with a consciousness other than my own.” ― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays March 29, 2022
45952. “Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45951. “She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence. ” ― Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man March 29, 2022
45950. “In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution – is not my solution.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45949. “…They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45948. “…the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45947. “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.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45946. “Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.” ― Zadie Smith , White Teeth March 29, 2022
45945. “Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45944. “You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45942. “You don’t have favourites among your children, but you do have allies. ” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45941. “But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45940. “But the problem with readers, the idea we’re given of reading is that the model of a reader is the person watching a film, or watching television. So the greatest principle is, “I should sit here and I should be entertained.” And the more classical model, which has been completely taken away, is the idea of a reader as an amateur musician. An amateur musician who sits at the piano, has a piece of music, which is the work, made by somebody they don’t know, who they probably couldn’t comprehend entirely, and they have to use their skills to play this piece of music. The greater the skill, the greater the gift that you give the artist and that the artist gives you. That’s the incredibly unfashionable idea of reading. And yet when you practice reading, and you work at a text, it can only give you what you put into it. It’s an old moral, but it’s completely true.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45938. “Right. I look fine. Except I don’t,’ said Zora, tugging sadly at her man’s nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn’t 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 woman’s magazine crossed the threshold of the Belsey home to Kiki’s 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.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45937. “The very reason I write is so that I might not sleepwalk through my entire life.” ― Zadie Smith March 29, 2022
45936. “Stop worrying about your identity and concern yourself with the people you care about, ideas that matter to you, beliefs you can stand by, tickets you can run on. Intelligent humans make those choices with their brain and hearts and they make them alone. The world does not deliver meaning to you. You have to make it meaningful…and decide what you want and need and must do. It’s a tough, unimaginably lonely and complicated way to be in the world. But that’s the deal: you have to live; you can’t live by slogans, dead ideas, clichés, or national flags. Finding an identity is easy. It’s the easy way out.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45935. “The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.” ― Zadie Smith, On Beauty March 29, 2022
45934. “You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
45933. “Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.” ― Zadie Smith, White Teeth March 29, 2022
40622. Bright Yellow Wall (and a Stunning Bull Statue) in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico November 11, 2021
40605. Flower of the Day for November 10, 2021 at the Cathedral de Cuernavaca, Mexico November 11, 2021