Zadie Smith

Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand, but tell it.

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

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.

It__ such a confidence trick, writing a novel. The main person you have to trick into confidence is yourself. This is hard to do alone.

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.

I have known many true connoisseurs, with excellent tastes that range across the humanities and the culinary arts--and they never fail to have a fatal effect on my self-esteem. When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about the opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English civil war, of French wines--I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time?

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?

I want to stay still and to keep moving. I want this life and another.

Under every friendship there is a difficult sentence that must be said, in order that the friendship can be survived.

He had liked to listen to the exotic (to a Belsey) chatter of business and money and practical politics; to hear that Equality was a myth, and Multiculturalism was a fatuous dream; he thrilled at the suggestion that Art was a gift from God, blessing only a handful of masters, and most Literature merely a veil for poorly reasoned left-wing ideologies.

All tastes are expressions of belief.

The future's another country, man... And I still ain't got a passport.

The past is always tense, the future perfect.

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

I don__ want your babies, Felix. I can assure you I__ 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. __ou 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__ine. Poetic justice.

To her credit, though, Trace didn't lose her famous temper, not at that moment. At eighteen she was already expert at the older woman's art of fermenting rage, conserving it, for later use.

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

They were real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independently from him, although he had set the thing in motion. They had different thoughts and beliefs. ~ on children growing up.