Zadie Smith

“The past is always tense, the future perfect.”

“Time is how you spend your love.”

“Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house.”

“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.”

“Was it wrong to hope to be happy?”

“It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.”

“On her first day at the school her mother had explained to her she was about to enter the devil's lair, filled her satchel with two hundred copies of the Watchtower, and instructed her to go...”

“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 t...”

“USURY: Everybody's 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 lo...”

“Generally she kept her head down, but on the occasions she raised it she was treated to the most intimate of panoramic views: the scattered possessions of the three people she had created. S...”

“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....”

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

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

“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 e...”

“Re-examine all you have been told,' Whitman tells us, 'and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.' Full disclosure: what insults my soul is the idea—popular in the culture just now, and pre...”

“My life is black and white and mixed. My mother's a Rastafarian, my dad was a short white guy - it's not an affectation. It's also the lives of millions of people throughout the world.”

“That's the thing about fiction writers: what seems alarming or particular or perverse about them is simply the shape of their brain - they cannot be otherwise.”

“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.'”

“The lack of alternatives to an illegal action does not legitimise that action.”