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"They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up."
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"The unjustifiable severity of a parent is loaded with this aggravation, that those whom he injures are always in his sight."

"Kids are a great analogy. You want your kids to grow up, and you don't want your kids to grow up. You want your kids to become independent of you, but it's also a parent's worst nightmare: That they won't need you. It's like the real tragedy of parenting."

"I learned to love my son without wanting to possess him and I learned how to teach him to teach himself."

"Sometimes your kids will say the nastiest things, won't they, Rose? You want to ask,'Whose child is this?'"Rose chuckled."But usually, they're just in some kind of pain. They need to work it out."

"I don't think my parents liked me. They put a live teddy bear in my crib."

"Never tell a child that something it's too hard."
Explore more quotes by Zadie Smith

"You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality."

"It's like that quote: 'If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.' The choice between a duty or a principle, you know?"

"She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down."

"At a certain point you have to leave childish things behind, and one of the childish things is a sense that 'Wow, I can draw' or in my case 'Wow, I can read'... You feel you have what's called a talent, but as you become an adult, if you hope to make things, you have to give up the preoccupation with talent otherwise you'll spend your life painting beautiful pictures of fruit bowls that look like fruit bowls."

"And it's time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings."

"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."
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