Quotes from Zadie Smith

The other problem with Brother Ibrhm ad-Din Shukrallah, the biggest problem perhaps, was his great affection for tautology. Though he promised explanation, elucidation, and exposition, linguistically he put one in mind of a dog chasing its own tail: "Now there are many types of warfare . . . I will name a few. Chemical warfare is the warfare where them men kill each other chemically with warfare.

Now see, with me, said Louie, tiring suddenly of his daughter's talk, with me I didn't need dance school, matter of fact I used to rule the dance floor!

It's hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning.

The fact is if we followed the history of every little country in this world-in its dramatic as well as its quiet times- we would have no space left in which to live our own lives or to apply ourselves to our necessary tasks, never mind indulge in occasional pleasures, like swimming. Surely there is something to be said for drawing a circle around our attention and remaining within that circle. But how large should this circle be?

and had a mauvais quart d'heure wondering whether she herself had any personality at all or was in truth only the accumulation and reflection of all the things she had read in books and seen on television.

She held herself apart, always.

maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending

I thought it odd that my father should travel eight miles to Lambert's for comfort when Lambert seemed already to have suffered the kind of abandonment my father feared so badly

I thought of that William Gibson quote: "The future is already here—it's just not evenly distributed yet.

But the light in front of the mosque-- the light I stood in as I was greeted like a local hero, simply for rising from my bed three hours after most of the women and children I lived with-- this light was something else again. It buzzed and held you in its heat, it was thick, alive with pollen and insects and birds, and because nothing higher than one story interrupted its path, it gave all its gifts at once, blessing everything equally, an explosion of simultaneous illumination.

She fears the destination. Be objective! What is the fear? It it something to do with death and time and age. Simply: I am eighteen in my mind I am eighteen and if I do nothing if I stand still nothing will change I will be eighteen always. For always. Time will stop. I'll never die.

In the Chalfen lexicon the middle classes were the inheritors of the enlightenment, the creators of the welfare state, the intellectual elite and the source of all culture.

Unbeknownst to all involved, ancient ley-lines run underneath these two journeys—or, to put it in modern parlance, this is a rerun.

this new delicacy, this suggestions of mortal time working on her just as it works on everybody, spoke to me more loudly than any of the old accusations of daughterly neglect ever had.

She noticed the most important thing of all, which is the dance lesson within the performance.

you go back and back and back and it's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. Do you think anybody is English? Really English? It's a fairy-tale!

He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas present—early, and the same as everyone else's.

From where I stood it was a pose that collapsed many periods in her life into one: mother and lover, big sister, best friend, superstar and diplomat, billionaire and street kid, foolish girl and woman of substance.

our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day.

These are old secrets. They will come out like wisdom teeth when the time is right.)

Everybody knows that if people hang around for any length of time in an urban area without purpose they are likely to become "antisocial.

But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears – dissolution, disappearance. Even

Work on a computer that is disconnected from the internet.

The fundamental skill of all mothers—the management of time—was beyond her.