NW Quotes

“I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Not everyone wants this conventional little life you’re rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire. And when it’s time for me to go I fully intend to roll off my one-person dinghy into the flames and be consumed. I'm not afraid.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Perhaps sex isn't of the body at all. Perhaps it is a function of language.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“She had that thing most people don't have - curiosity. She might not have always got the right answers, but she wanted to ask the questions. It's very hard if you are interested in ideas and all that, ideas and the philosophies of the past, it's very hard to find someone around here to really talk to. That's the tragedy of the thing really I mean, when you think about it. Certainly I can't find anyone around here to talk to anymore. And for a woman it's even harder you see. They can feel very trapped - because of the patriarchy. I do feel everyone needs to have these little chats now and then.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Maybe it doesn't matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Life’s not a video game, Felix- there aren’t a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isn’t actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...]”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“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.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Like most children, theirs was a relation based on verbs, not nouns.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Here lie a man and a woman. The man is more beautiful than the woman. And for this reason there have been times when the woman has feared that she loves the man more than he loves her. He has always denied this.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“She lost God so smoothly and painlessly she had to wonder what she'd ever meant by the word.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“She struggled to think of anyone besides perhaps James Baldwin and Jesus who had experiences the profound isolation and loenliness she now knew to be the one and only true reality of this world.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Don't you think they're as bored as you are? You think you're somebody special? You think I wake up everyday so happy to see you? You're a snob, just in the other way. Do you think you are the only one who wants something else? Another life?”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“He smiles shyly at Leah. Aged ten he had a smile! Nathan Bogle: the very definition of desire for girls who had previously only felt that way about certain fragrant erasers. A smile to destroy the resolve of even the strictest teachers, other people's parents. Now she sees ten-year-olds and cannot believe they have inside them what she had inside her at the same age.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“They were married before they were friends, which is another way of saying:
Their marriage was the occasion of their friendship.
They were married before they noticed many small differences in background, aspiration, education, ambition. (...)
Noting such differences, Leah was in some sense disappointed in herself that they did not cause real conflict between them. It was hard to get used to the fact that the pleasure her body found in his, and vice versa, should so easily overrule the many objections she had, or should have had, or thought she should have had.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“you’re lucky that you find life so easy, Felix. You’re lucky that you’re happy, that you know how to be happy, that you’re a good person- and you want everyone to be happy and good because you are, and to find things easy because you do. Do it ever occur to you some people might not find life as easy to live as you do?”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“I don’t want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I’m not sitting up here like some tragic fallen woman every night dreaming of having your babies.” She began tracing a figure of eight with her fingernail along his stomach. The movement looked idle but the nail pressed in hard. “You realize of course that if it were the other way round there would be a law, there would be an actual law: John versus Jen in the high court. And John would put it to Jen that she did wilfully fuck him for five years, before dumping him without warning in the twilight of his procreative window, and taking up with young Jack-the-lad, only twenty-four years old and with a cock as long as my arm. The court rules in favor of John. Every time. Jen must pay damages. Huge sums. Plus six months in jail. No—nine. Poetic justice.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“I got something to tell you," said Keisha Blake, disguising her voice with her voice.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“She wanted to read things -- could not resist wanting to read things -- and reading was easily done, and relatively inexpensive. On the other hand, that she should receive any praise for such reflexive habits baffled the girl, for she knew herself to be fantastically stupid about many things. Wasn't it possible that what others mistook as intelligence might in fact be only a sort of mutation of the will? She could sit in one place longer than other children be bored for hours without complaint, and was completely devoted to filling in every last corner of the coloring books Augustus Blake sometimes brought home. She could not help her mutated will -- no more than she could help the shape of her feet or the street on which she was born. She was unable to glean real satisfaction from accidents. In the child's mind a breach now appeared: between what she believed she knew of herself, essentially, and her essence as others seemed to understand it. She began to exist for other people, and if ever asked a question to which she did not know the answer she was wont to fold her arms across her body and look upward. As if the question itself were to obvious to truly concern her.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“The window logs Kilburn’s skyline. Ungentrified, ungentrifiable. Boom and bust never come here. Here bust is permanent. Empty State Empire, empty Odeon, graffiti-streaked sidings rising and falling like a rickety roller coaster. Higgledy-piggledy rooftops and chimneys, some high, some low, packed tightly, shaken fags in a box. Behind the opposite window, retreating Willesden. Number 37. In the 1880s or thereabouts the whole thing went up at once – houses, churches, schools, cemeteries – an optimistic vision of Metroland. Little terraces, faux-Tudor piles. All the mod cons! Indoor toilet, hot water. Well-appointed country living for those tired of the city. Fast-forward. Disappointed city living for those tired of their countries.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“The nineties, ecstatic decade!”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“If she was more curt with her own family than a homeless man this only suggested that generosity was not an infinite quantity and had to be employed strategically where it was most needed.”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Leah watches Natalie stride over to her beautiful kitchen with her beautiful child. Everything behind those French doors is full and meaningful. The gestures, the glances, the conversations that can't be heard. How do you get to be so full? And so full of only meaningful things?”
― Zadie Smith, NW

“Once they were the same age. Now Leah is aging in dog years. Her thirty-five is seven times his, and seven times more important, so important he has to keep reminding her of the numbers, in case she forgets.”
― Zadie Smith, NW