Home > Work > NW

NW QUOTES

NW QUOTES

1 " 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

2 " 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

3 " Sometimes, one wants to have the illusion that one is making ones own life, out of one's own resources. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

4 " I am the sole author of the dictionary that defines me. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

5 " There was an inevitability about the road towards each other which encouraged meandering along the route. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

6 " Happiness is not an absolute value. It is a state of comparison. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

7 " Perhaps sex isn't of the body at all. Perhaps it is a function of language. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

8 " 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

9 " 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

10 " While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

11 " Maybe it doesn't matter that life never blossomed into something larger than itself. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

12 " 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

13 " Desire is never final, desire is imprecise and impractical [...] "

― Zadie Smith , NW

14 " Overnight everyone has grown up. While she was becoming, everyone grew up and became. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

15 " 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

16 " Like most children, theirs was a relation based on verbs, not nouns. "

― Zadie Smith , NW

17 " 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

18 " 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

19 " 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

20 " 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