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"Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. Almost everything else was subjugated to this ruling passion, reading stories. As a consequence, I can barely add a column of double digits, I have not the slightest idea of how a plane flies, I can't draw any better than a five-year-old."
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"June, you have killed my sincerity too. I will never again know who I am, what I am, what I love, what I want. Your beauty has drowned me, the core of me. You carry away with you a part of me reflected in you. When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You are the woman I want to be. I see in you that part of me which is you. I feel compassion for your childish pride, for your trembling unsureness, your dramatization of events, your enhancing of the loves given to you. I surrender my sincerity because if I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madness."
"I said I love you so much it's killing meand you kept saying sorryso I stopped explainingfor it never made sense to youwhat always did to meto let what you love kill youand never regret. As Romeo is dying Juliet saysI am willing to die to remain by your sideand love was never a static place of restbut the last second of euphoriawhile throwing yourself out from a 20 store windowto be able to sayI flew before I hit the ground,and it was glorious.Don't be sorry.The fall was beautiful, dear.The crash was beautiful."
"The sword wears out its sheath, as it is sometimes said. That is my story. My passions have made me live, and my passions have killed me. What passions, it may be asked. Trifles, the most childish things in the world. Yet they affected me as much as if the possessions of Helen, or the throne of the Universe, had been at stake."
"The greatest musicians never cared to be rock stars. They just wanted to play. The greatest actors never cared to be movie stars they just loved their craft. The greatest artists painted on canvas to fill their own hearts. It's how we truly feel about things in life that will determine our success."
Explore more quotes by Zadie Smith
"You can't state difference and also state equality. We have to state sameness to understand equality."
"I couldn't imagine her leaving this world without ripping its fabric."
"Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories."
"You never know, until it happens, what you will owe the dead."
"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."
"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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