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"You look fine. - Right. I look fine. Except I don't, said Zora, tugging sadly at her man's nightshirt. This was why Kiki had dreaded having girls: she knew she wouldn't be able to protect them from self-disgust."
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"If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the painful process of finding it."

"But for better or worse, I am not motivated by kindness."

"We must design how we wish to be perceived, and then we must work even harder to continuously recreate and re-evaluate that perception."

"Cut the connection between your clothes and your beliefs, because clothes will not make you something, it won't make you honest or dishonest, good or bad! Your essence will not change because of what you wear!"

"We must carefully cultivate the voice that speaks to us because an internal voice is the ultimate narrator of our charming and delightful personal story or the documentarian of our tragic and disgraceful plotlines. Stories that we tell ourselves become our functional reality, which format structures the concourse of the nested emotional control panel that guides and girds us through the din of the present."

"Since every individual is accountable ultimately to the self, the formation of that self demands our utmost care and attention."

"One day you will wake up, you will see with clear sight all that has held you back; you will feel lighter because you finally accept who you are. You will shine with flawless beauty because your happiness comes from the purity of your heart and one day I hope you realise all of this, before it's too late; because darling, if we spent our years nurturing the best of ourselves, heaven would be felt on earth."
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."

"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."

"Greeting cards routinely tell us that everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all of the time."

"I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage."
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