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Zadie Smith Quotes about Lying

All Zadie Smith Quotes Age Ambition Belief Character Children Consciousness Country Desire Duty Feelings Giving House Internet Kissing Language Lying quotes Myth Pain Past Perspective Reality Water Writing
The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

The greatest lie ever told about love is that it sets you free.

Zadie Smith
Love, Lying, African American
Zadie Smith (2006). “On Beauty”, p.463, Penguin UK

But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.

Zadie Smith
Lying, Past, Perfect
Zadie Smith (2000). “White teeth”

All novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.

Zadie Smith
Lying, Cutting, Convince Us

Then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging,it seems like some long, dirty lie ... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?

Zadie Smith
Giving Up, Lying, Believe
Zadie Smith (2000). “White Teeth: A Novel”, Random House Incorporated

No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.

Zadie Smith
Lying, Tangled, Soul
Zadie Smith (2001). “White Teeth”, p.408, Penguin UK

When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination: once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people's, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment - once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognise and do not believe in - what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception.

Zadie Smith
Lying, Believe, Writing

Other people’s words are so important. And then without warning they stop being important, along with all those words of yours that their words prompted you to write. Much of the excitement of a new novel lies in the repudiation of the one written before. Other people’s words are the bridge you use to cross from where you were to wherever you’re going.

Zadie Smith
Lying, Writing, Bridges
"Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays". Book by Zadie Smith, 2009.

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