Zadie Smith Quotes

Girls either wanted him or wanted to improve him, but most often a combination of the two. They wanted to improve him until he justified the amount they wanted him.

Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra—they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style.

You don’t come to live here unless the delusion of a reality shaped around your own desires isn’t a strong aspect of your personality. 'A reality shaped around your own desires' — there is something sociopathic in that ambition.

Those are my bougainvillea—I got Victoria to plant them today, but I don;t know if they will survive. But Right now they have the appearance of survival, which is almost the same thing.

By Allah, how _thankful_ he is (_yes, madam, one moment, madam_), how _gladdened_ by the thought that Magid, Magid at least, will, in a matter of four hours, be flying east from this place and its demands, its constant cravings, this place where there exists neither patience nor pity, where the people want what they want _now_, right now (_We've been waiting twenty minutes for the vegetables_), expecting their lovers, their children, their friends, and even their gods to arrive at little cost and in little time, just as table ten expect their tandoori prawns. . . .

One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally.

I don’t want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I’m not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies.” She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. “You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No—nine. Poetic justice.

To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it, for later use.