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White Teeth QUOTES

White Teeth QUOTES

1 " In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

2 " Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

3 " It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

4 " We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution---it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad---peace be upon Him!---tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

5 " When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

6 " You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

7 " Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

8 " More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

9 " Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business? "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

10 " And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest, and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbors, pay social calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They need it. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

11 " But dying is no easy trick. And suicide can't be put on a list of Things To Do in between cleaning the grill pan and leveling the sofa leg with a brick. It is the decision not to do, to un-do; a kiss blown at oblivion. No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It is for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

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

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

13 " Full stories are as rare as honesty. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

14 " Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

15 " [..] as midnight inevitably came and went without the horsemen of the apocalypse making an appearance, Clara surprised herself by falling into a melancholy.

For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling sea-water to retrieve the salt something is gained but something is lost. Though her friends Merlin, Wan-Si, et al. clapped her on the back and congratulated her for exorcizing those fervid dreams of perdition and redemption, Clara quietly mourned the warmer touch she had waited for these nineteen years, the all-enveloping bear hug of the Saviour, the One who was Alpha and Omega, both the beginning and the end; the man who was meant to take her away from all this, from the listless reality of life in a ground-floor flat in Lambeth.

What now for Clara? Ryan would find another fad; Darcus need only turn to the other channel; for Hortense another date would of course materialize, along with more leaflets, ever more faith. But Clara was not like Hortense. Yet a residue, left over from the evaporation of Clara's faith, remained. She still wished for a saviour. She still wished for a man to whisk her away, to choose her above others so that she might Walk in white with Him: for [she] was worthy. Revelation 3:4. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

16 " I AM NOT A WAITER. I HAVE BEEN A STUDENT, A SCIENTIST, A SOLDIER, MY WIFE IS CALLED ALSANA, WE LIVE IN EAST LONDON BUT WE WOULD LIKE TO MOVE NORTH. I AM A MUSLIM BUT ALLAH HAS FORSAKEN ME OR I HAVE FORSAKEN ALLAH, I'M NOT SURE. I HAVE A FRIEND—ARCHIE—AND OTHERS. I AM FORTY-NINE BUT WOMEN STILL TURN IN THE STREET. SOMETIMES. (3.81) "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

17 " But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was? "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

18 " One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

19 " By Allah, how _thankful_ he is (_yes, madam, one moment, madam_), how _gladdened_ by the thought that Magid, Magid at least, will, in a matter of four hours, be flying east from this place and its demands, its constant cravings, this place where there exists neither patience nor pity, where the people want what they want _now_, right now (_We've been waiting twenty minutes for the vegetables_), expecting their lovers, their children, their friends, and even their gods to arrive at little cost and in little time, just as table ten expect their tandoori prawns. . . . "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth

20 " It starts innocently. Casually. You turn up at the annual spring fair full of beans, help with the raffle tickets (because the pretty red-haired music teacher asks you to) and win a bottle of whiskey (all school raffles are fixed), and, before you know where you are, you're turning up at the weekly school council meetings, organizing concerts, discussing plans for a new music department, donating funds for the rejuvenation of the water fountains—you're implicated in the school, you're involved in it. Sooner or later you stop dropping your children at the school gates. You start following them in. "

― Zadie Smith , White Teeth