Quotes from Zadie Smith

Between propriety and joy choose joy.

It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.' Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.

I often wondered: is it some kind of a trade-off? Do others have to lose so we can win?  Ã¢â'¬Â¢

He traced the genealogy of the feeling.

No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack

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

maybe the whole Internet will simply become like Facebook: falsely jolly, fake-friendly, self-promoting, slickly disingenuous…." - Zadie Smith

She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour . But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world.

Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over irie, was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page. (p.332)

Art is the Western myth, with which we both console ourselves and make ourselves.

the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.

You can feel bad... I mean, that's not illegal.

Claire spoke often in her poetry of the idea of fittingness: that is, when your chosen pursuit and your ability to achieve it--no matter how small or insignificant both might be--are matched exactly, are fitting. This, Claire argued, is when we become truly human, fully ourselves, beautiful....In Claire's presence, you were not faulty or badly designed, no, not at all. You were the fitting receptacle and instrument of your talents and beliefs and desires.

A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.

You start to think of contempt as a virus. Infecting individuals first, but spreading rapidly through families, communities, peoples, power structures, nations. Less flashy than hate. More deadly. When contempt kills you, it doesn't have to be a vendetta or even entirely conscious. It can be a passing whim. It's far more common, and therefore more lethal.

I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, said Hifan proudly. Irie inhaled. Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation, repeated Millat, impressed. That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu arse sound to it. Irie frowned. KEVIN? We are aware, said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, that we have an acronym problem.

And I became fixated, too, upon Katharine Hepburn's famous Fred and Ginger theory: He gives her class, she gives him sex. Was this a general rule? Did all friendships—all relations—involve this discreet and mysterious exchange of qualities, this exchange of power?

Philosophy is listening to warbling posh boys, it is being more bored than you have ever been in your life, more bored than you thought it possible to be.

These children spend so much time demanding the status of adulthood from you - even when it isn't in your power to bestow it - and then when the real shit hits the fan, when you need them to be adults, suddenly they're children again.

No, Keeks - this is a good thing. It's been hell - I know it has. But I don't want to be without... us. You;re the person I - you're my life, Keeks. You have been and you will be and you are. i don't know how you want me to say it. You're for me - you are me. We've always known that - and there's no way out now anyway. I love you. You're for me.

It hurts to look at what you can't have

Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became.

More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.

As a fact it was, in my mind, at one and the same time absolutely true and obviously untrue, and perhaps only children are able to accommodate double-faced facts like these.