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I'm Not Sure If You're The Person For Me Any More.
-Zadie Smith
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I'm Not Sure If

Zadie Smith
...
I'm Not Sure If You're The Person For Me Any More.

Understanding the Quote: "i'm not sure if you're the person for me any more...."

This quote by Zadie Smith reflects deeply on the theme of not sure. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Not Sure, Persons, Ifs, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Zadie Smith interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith is celebrated for insightful thoughts on not sure and persons. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Not Sure
Persons
Ifs
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It Wasn't Like The Spare Rooms Of Immigrants - Packed To The Rafters With All That They Have Ever Possessed, No Matter How Defective Or Damaged, Mountains Of Odds And Ends - The Stand Testament To The Fact That They Have Things Now, Where Before They Had Nothing.
Odds
Mountain
Matter
It Seems That If You Put People On Paper And Move Them Through Time, You Cannot Help But Talk About Ethics, Because The Ethical Realm Exists Nowhere If Not Here: In The Consequences Of Human Actions As They Unfold In Time, And The Multiple Interpretive Possibility Of Those Actions.
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The Last Page Of [lincoln In The Bardo] - Without Giving Too Much Away - Involves Somebody Entering Somebody Else. Not In A Sexual Way. But It Says One Of The Simplest Things You Could Ever Say, Which Is That We Must Try And Be Inside Each Other. We Must Have Some Kind Of Feeling For Each Other And Enter Into Each Other's Experience.
Giving
Feelings
Trying
Full Stories Are As Rare As Honesty.
Honesty
Stories
If You're Going To Write A Good Book, You Have To Make Mistakes And You Have To Not Be So Cautious All The Time.
Mistake
Book
Writing
One Thing You Learn About The Novel As A Form Is That It's Always Smarter Than You Are.
Form
Novel
Smarter
The Really Heroic Thing About Nick Hornby Is That He Lives In North London And Rarely Leaves It... Every English Writer Needs Their Corner That Is Forever England - But Only A Few Brave Men Choose To Make That Corner Highbury.
Men
Brave
Forever
Desperation, Weakness, Vulnerability - These Things Will Always Be Exploited. You Need To Protect The Weak, Ring-fence Them, With Something Far Stronger Than Empathy.
Empathy
Stronger
Weakness
My Short Stories Have Always Pushed Twenty Pages. That's No Length For A Short Story To Be. You Either Do Them Short Like Carver Or You Stop Trying.
Trying
Twenties
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Tell The Truth Through Whichever Veil Comes To Hand - But Tell It. Resign Yourself To The Lifelong Sadness That Comes From Never ­being Satisfied.
Writing
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Hands
I Used To Take That God's-eye View As A Comfort When I Was A Child. I'd Think, "well, We Couldn't Find The World Meaningful At All If It Weren't For Death." Of Course, That Is The Smuggest And Most Intolerable Of All Perspectives Because I'm Not Suffering From The Death Or The Pain.
Meaningful
Children
Pain
...despite All This, It Is Still Hard To Admit That There Is No One More English Than The Indian, No One More Indian Than The English. There Are Still Young White Men Who Are Angry About That; Who Will Roll Out At Closing Time Into The Poorly Lit Streets With A Kitchen Knife Wrapped In A Tight Fist. But It Makes An Immigrant Laugh To Hear The Fears Of The Nationalist, Scared Of Infection, Penetration, Miscegenation, When This Is Small Fry, Peanuts, Compared To What The Immigrant Fears - Dissolution, Disappearance.
Men
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Some People--samad For Example--will Tell You Not To Trust People Who Overuse The Phrase "at The End Of The Day"--football Managers, Estate Agents, Salesmen Of All Kinds--but Archie's Never Felt That Way About It. Prudent Use Of Said Phrase Never Failed To Convince Him That His Interlocutor Was Getting To The Bottom Of Things, To The Fundamentals.
Football
People
The End Of The Day
This Is What A Woman Is: Unadorned, After Children And Work And Age, And Experience-these Are The Marks Of Living.
Children
Age
Age And Experience
And So It Happened Again, The Daily Miracle Whereby Interiority Opens Out And Brings To Bloom The Million-petalled Flower Of Being Here, In The World, With Other People. Neither As Hard As She Had Thought It Might Be Nor As Easy As It Appeared.
Flower
People
Miracle
I'm Always Interested In The Way People Speak And Move In Their Environment, In A Very Particular Environment. I'm Never Interested In Writing A Kind Of Neutral, Universal Novel That Could Be Set Anywhere. To Me, The Any Novel Is A Local Thing Always.
Moving
Writing
People
The Choices A Writer Makes Within A Tradition - Preferring Milton To Moliere, Caring For Barth Over Barthelme - Constitute Some Of The Most Personal Information We Can Have About Him.
Caring
Artist
Choices
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.
Philosophy
Mean
Past
Oh, I Know That. You Know Me, Baby, I Cannot Be Broken. Takes A Giant To Snap Me In Half.
Baby
Broken
Giants
(feedback) People Become Addicted To It. That’s Why Journalism Is So Popular, Because You Want To Hear, Every Day, What People Think Of What You Just Wrote. I Think A Little Patience On That Front Can Be Good, Too.
Thinking
People
Want
Revelation Is Where All Crazy People End Up. It's The Last Stop On The Nutso Express.
Crazy
People
Lasts
I Know A Lot Of People Who Read And Think: "george [saunders] Is So Much Fun." There's No Denying You're Fun To Read, But As A Writer I Think Of [george Saunders] As, In Fact, Not A Fun And Freewheeling Type But Really An Obsessive Control Artist.
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Thinking
You Don't Have Favourites Among Your Children, But You Do Have Allies.
Children
Allies
Your Children
The Belief That Consciousness Extends Beyond Death Is Surely To Put More Belief In The Permanence Of Self, Not Less. That Seems To Me A Comfort That You're Allowing Yourself.
Self
Comfort
Belief
Tell The Truth Through Whichever Veil Comes To Hand - But Tell It.
Hands
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Telling The Truth
I Like Books That Expose Me To People Unlike Me And Books That Do Battle Against Caricature Or Simplification. That, To Me, Is The Heroic In Fiction.
Book
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In A Whisper He Began Begging For—and, As The Sun Set, Received—the Concession People Always Beg For: A Little More Time.
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Anyone Over The Age Of Thirty Catching A Bus Can Consider Himself A Failure.
Age
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She Hopes For Nothing Except Fine Weather And A Resolution. She Wants To End Properly, Like A Good Sentence.
Weather
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Character
Past
Names
I Tap Danced For Ten Years Before I Began To Understand People Don't Make Musicals Anymore. All I Wanted To Do Was Be At Mgm Working For Arthur Freed Or Gene Kelly Or Vincent Minelli. Historical And Geographical Constraints Made This Impossible. Slowly But Surely The Pen Became Mightier Than The Double Pick-up Time Step With Shuffle.
Years
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Historical
It's Still Easier To Find The Correct Hoover Bag Than To Find One Pure Person, One Pure Faith, On The Globe.
Bags
Easier
Hoover
Generally, Women Can't Do This, But Men Retain The Ancient Ability To Leave A Family And A Past. They Just Unhook Themselves, Like Removing A Fake Beard, And Skulk Discreetly Back Into Society, Changed Men. Unrecognizable.
Past
Men
Fake
Sometimes You Get A Flash Of What You Look Like To Other People.
People
Looks
Sometimes
You Can't State Difference And Also State Equality. We Have To State Sameness To Understand Equality.
Differences
States
Sameness
Try To Read Your Own Work As A Stranger Would Read It, Or Even Better, As An Enemy Would.
Writing
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I Wouldn't Write About People Who Are Living And Who Are Close To Me, Because I Think It's A Very Violent Thing To Do To Another Person. And Anytime I Have Done It, Even In The Disguise Of Fiction, The Results Have Been Horrific.
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Thinking
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Novels And Stories Are Sometimes Very Complex Staging Grounds To Say, In Fact, Very Simple Things. Things Impossible To Say Otherwise Because They Are Repeated In So Many Exploitative Contexts - Adverts And Tv Shows And Political Speeches.
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He Did Not Consider If Or How Or Why He Loved Them. They Were Just Love: They Were The First Evidence He Ever Had Of Love, And They Would Be The Last Confirmation Of Love When Everything Else Fell Away.
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It Was In The Air, Or So It Seemed To Kiki, This Hatred Of Women And Their Bodies- It Seeped In With Every Draught In The House; People Brought It Home On Their Shoes, They Breathed It In Off Their Newspapers. There Was No Way To Control It.
Home
Air
Shoes
Cambridge Was A Joy. Tediously. People Reading Books In A Posh Place. It Was My Fantasy. I Loved It. I Miss It Still.
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I Remember So Clearly, In The Early Days, If I Had To Do A Piece Of Press, They'd Phone For Me And Say, 'oh, We're Going To Bring Hair And Makeup, It'll Take About Five Hours.' And I Said, 'well, If It Was Ian Mcewan, Would It Take About Five Hours? Would There Be Hair And Makeup? Cause If That's Not The Case, Then Don't Bring The Hair And Makeup.' So, It's Fascinating That They Just Assume: It's A Young Woman, She Must Want To Be Photographed For Five Hours. She Must Have Nothing Better To Do Than Delight In Trying On All Your Shoes. But It's Not The Case.
Makeup
Phones
Hair
When I Was 13, I Really Used To Skip Down The Street, Happy In Thinking, "oh, Well, Someone's Suffering Pain In Order For Me To Feel This Pleasure."
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Thinking
Order
Because Immigrants Have Always Been Particularly Prone To Repetition - It's Something To Do With That Experience Of Moving From West To East Or East To West Or From Island To Island. Even When You Arrive, You're Still Going Back And Forth; Your Children Are Going Round And Round. There's No Proper Term For It - Original Sin Seems Too Harsh; Maybe Original Trauma Would Be Better.
Children
Moving
Islands
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.
Games
Numbers
Next Level
Novels Are Not About Expressing Yourself, They're About Something Beautiful, Funny, Clever And Organic. Self-expression ? Go And Ring A Bell In A Yard If You Want To Express Yourself.
Beautiful
Clever
Self
But It Makes An Immigrant Laugh To Hear The Fears Of The Nationalist, Scared Of Infection, Penetration, Miscegenation, When This Is Small Fry, Peanuts, Compared To What The Immigrant Fears - Dissolution, Disappearance.
Laughing
Scared
Peanuts
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Brother
Waiting
Feelings
The Novel Leads You Places That You Never Could Have Gotten To Otherwise.
Novel
I Always Remind Myself That [ Jean-paul] Sartre And [simone] De Beauvoir Didn't Have Children. And When You Don't Have Children, It Might Be Easier To Believe That The Child Doesn't Come With Something.
Children
Believe
Might
Jerome Said, It's Like, A Family Doesn't Work Anymore When Everyone In It Is More Miserable Than They Would Be If They Were Alone, You Know?
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Miserable
Said
Then He Gave Her A Kiss On The Forehead That Felt Like A Baptism And She Wept Like A Baby.
Baby
Kissing
Baptism
Make Sure The Lubricant Is Unscented. Don't Join Fashionable 'schools Of Thought.' Read Everything.
School
Fashionable
She Loved You In The Morning Because The Day Was New.
Morning
The Library Was The Place I Went To Find Out What There Was To Know. It Was Absolutely Essential.
Library
Essentials
Knows
What Interests Me In [lincoln In The Bardo] Is A Slight Perverse Balance Between The Sublime And The Grotesque. Like You Could Have Landed Only On The Sublime. But My Argument Is That The Sublime Couldn't Exist Without This Other Half.
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Balance
Half
It's Not In Good Taste To Have Talking Ghosts In A Grown-up Novel.
Talking
Taste
Ghost
This Because It Is Never Really Very Cold In England. It Is Drizzly, And The Wind Will Blow; Hail Happens, And There Is A Breed Of Tuesday In January In Which Time Creeps And No Light Comes And The Air Is Full Of Water And Nobody Really Loves Anybody, But Still A Decent Jumper And A Waxen Jacket Lined With Wool Is Sufficient For Every Weather England's Got To Give.
Blow
Light
Air
Don't Confuse Honours With Achievement.
Achievement
Honour
It Seems To Me,' Said Magid Finally, As The Moon Became Clearer Than The Sun, 'that You Have Tried To Love A Man As If He Were An Island And You Were Shipwrecked And You Could Mark The Land With An X. It Seems To Me It Is Too Late In The Day For All That.' Then He Gave Her A Kiss On The Forehead That Felt Like A Baptism And She Wept Like A Baby.
Baby
Kissing
Moon
I Just Realized Quite Early On That I'm Not Going To Be The Type Who Can Write A Novel Every Two Years. I Think You Need To Feel An Urgency About The Act. Otherwise, When You Read It, You Feel No Urgency, Either. So I Don't Write Unless I Really Feel I Need To, And That's A Luxury.
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Thinking
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Today, Writing Seems To Me Like An Incredible Luxury, Almost A Perversity, Something Which Hardly Exists In The World Anymore, Where You Get To See The Fruits Of Your Actions In A Daily Way.
Writing
Luxury
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You Are Never Stronger...than When You Land On The Other Side Of Despair.
Land
Empowering
Despair
Can't A Rapper Insist, Like Other Artists, On A Fictional Reality, In Which He Is Somehow Still On The Corner, Despite Occupying The Penthouse Suite?
Artist
Reality
Rapper
The Nineties, Ecstatic Decade!
Ecstatic
Decades
You Can Feel Bad... I Mean, That's Not Illegal.
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Illegal
Feels
English, As A Subject, Never Really Got Over Its Upstart Nature. It Tries To Bulk Itself Up With Hopeless Jargon And Specious Complexity, Tries To Imitate Subjects It Can Never Be.
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Jargon
Hopeless
Protect The Time And Space In Which You Write. Keep Everybody Away From It, Even The People Who Are Most Important To You.
Writing
Space
People
...they Cannot Escape Their History Any More Than You Yourself Can Lose Your Shadow.
Shadow
White Teeth
Loses
It Reminds Me That Those Of Us Who Turn In Disgust From What We Consider An Overinflated Liberal-bourgeois Sense Of Self Should Be Careful What We Wish For: Our Denuded Networked Selves Don't Look More Free, They Just Look More Owned.
Self
Wish
Looks
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.
Lying
Writing
Bridges
He Was Bookish, She Was Not; He Was Theoretical, She Political. She Called A Rose A Rose. He Called It An Accumulation Of Cultural And Biological Constructions Circulating Around The Mutually Attracting Binary Poles Of Nature/artifice.
Rose
Political
Construction
I'm Most Honest About Writing When I'm Talking To Family Or Friends, Not To Newspapers.
Writing
Talking
Honest
We Cannot Love Something Solely Because It Has Been Ignored. It Must Also Be Worthy Of Our Attention.
Attention
Ignored
Worthy
Boys Are Just Boys After All, But Sometimes Girls Really Seem To Be The Turn Of A Pale Wrist, Or The Sudden Jut Of A Hip, Or A Clutch Of Very Dark Hair Falling Across A Freckled Forehead. I'm Not Saying That's What They Really Are. I'm Just Saying Sometimes It Seems That Way, And That Those Details (a Thigh Mole, A Full Face Flush, A Scar The Precise Shape And Size Of A Cashew Nut) Are So Many Hooks Waiting To Land You.
Girl
Fall
Dark
Sometimes I Think My Whole Professional Life Has Been Based On This Hunch I Had, Early On, That Many People Feel Just As Muddled As I Do, And Might Be Happy To Tag Along With Me On This Search For Clarity, For Precision. I Love That Aspect Of Writing. Nothing Makes Me Happier Than To Hear A Reader Say: That’s Just What I’ve Always Felt, But You Said It Clearly.
Writing
Thinking
Feels Just
Any Woman Who Counts On Her Face Is A Fool.
Faces
Fool
Desire Is Never Final, Desire Is Imprecise And Impractical [...]
Desire
Finals
I Often Worry That My Idea Of Personhood Is Nostalgic, Irrational, Inaccurate.
Ideas
Worry
Nostalgic
The Lack Of Alternatives To An Illegal Action Does Not Legitimise That Action.
Doe
Alternatives
Action
For Ridding Oneself Of Faith Is Like Boiling Seawater To Retrieve The Salt--something Is Gained But Something Is Lost.
Salt
Lost
Oneself
English Writing Tends To Fall Into Two Categories - The Big, Baggy Epic Novel Or The Fairly Controlled, Tidy Novel. For A Long Time, I Was A Fan Of The Big, Baggy Novel, But There's Definitely An Advantage To Having A Little Bit More Control.
Fall
Writing
Epic
A Writer's Duty Is To Register What It Is Like For Him Or Her To Be In The World.
Writing
World
Duty
I Don't Actually Believe In The Extension Of Consciousness After Death.
Believe
Consciousness
After Death
To A Novelist, Fluidity Is The Ultimate Good Omen; Suddenly Difficult Problems Are Simply Solved, Intractable Structural Knots Loosen Themselves, And You Come Upon The Key Without Even Recognizing That This Is What You Hold.
Keys
Novelists
Fluidity
All My Books Are Made Up Of Other Books. They're All Deeply Structured On Other Fiction, Because I Was A Student In Fiction And I Didn't Have Much Actual Living To Draw On. I Suspect A Lot Of Other People's Novels Are Like That, Too, Though They Might Be Slower To Talk About It.
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People
Fiction
The Object Of The Passion Is Just An Accessory To The Passion Itself.
Passion
Accessories
Objects
It's A Funny Thing About Rap, That When You Say 'i' Into The Microphone, It's Like A Public Confession. It's Very Strange.
Rap
Funny Things
Strange
Are There Other People Who, When Watching A Documentary Set In A Prison, Secretly Think, As I Have, 'wish I Had All That Time To Read'?
Thinking
People
Wish
I'm Just Interested In Women's Friendships Generally. It Always Seems To Me, And This Is Just My Pet Theory, That Women Are Kind Of At The Sharp End Of Capitalism One Way Or Another. Mainly Because They Buy Everything. In A Practical Sense, Women Buy Most Things. They're Always Comparing - To Friends, To Famous People, To Other People. An Obsessive Act Of Comparison.
People
Pet
Way
Each Couple Is Its Own Vaudeville Act.
Couple
Vaudeville
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Lying
Believe
Writing
I Like Books That Don't Give You An Easy Ride. I Like The Feeling Of Discomfort. The Sense Of Being Implicated.
Book
Giving
Feelings
She Wore Her Sexuality With An Older Woman's Ease, And Not Like An Awkward Purse, Never Knowing How To Hold It, Where To Hang It, Or When To Just Put It Down.
Women
Knowing
Awkward
13.5 Mrs. Wolfe Asks Whether Mr. Iqbal Expects Her Susan To Undertake Compulsory Headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal Infers That, Considering Susan's Academic Performance And Weight Problems, A Headstand Regime Might Be Desirable.
Weight Problems
Might
Academic
There's A Perception That Novels Can't Usually Allow For Your Kind Of Absolute Attention To Detail.
Perception
Details
Attention
The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Love Is That It Sets You Free.
Love
Lying
African American
…maybe The Whole Internet Will Simply Become Like Facebook: Falsely Jolly, Fake-friendly, Self-promoting, Slickly Disingenuous….” - Zadie Smith
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Fake
Friendly
Asking Why Rappers Always Talk About Their Stuff Is Like Asking Why Milton Is Forever Listing The Attributes Of Heavenly Armies. Because Boasting Is A Formal Condition Of The Epic Form. And Those Taught That They Deserve Nothing Rightly Enjoy It When They Succeed In Terms The Culture Understands.
Army
Epic
Rapper
We Cannot Be All The Writers All The Time. We Can Only Be Who We Are. Which Leads Me To My Second Point: Writers Do Not Write What They Want, They Write What They Can.
Writing
Want
Who We Are
A Lot Of [george Saunders] Early Stories Now Feel Prophetic. Take The Recent Election [of Donald Trump]. Historians In 100 Years Might Write About It As Being The First Internet Election, In Which What Happened Was Actually An Expression In The Real World Of A Virtual Reality. And You've Been Writing About That Subject For A While.
Real
Writing
Expression
She Represents Love, Beauty, Purity, The Ideal Female And The Moon...and She's The Mystère Of Jealousy, Vengeance And Discord, And, On The Other Hand, Of Love, Perpetual Help, Goodwill, Health, Beauty And Fortune.
Moon
Hands
Female
Something In Me Was Changed By Lincoln In The Bardo, And The Great Sublime/grotesque Risk Of [george Saunders'] Ghosts Was A Part Of It.
Risk
Sublime
Ghost
It's A Feeling Of Happiness That Knocks Me Clean Out Of Adjectives. I Think Sometimes That The Best Reason For Writing Novels Is To Experience Those Four And A Half Hours After You Write The Final Word.
Writing
Thinking
Feelings
I'm Not Sure If You're The Person For Me Any More.
Not Sure
Persons
Ifs
Art Is The Western Myth, With Which We Both Console Ourselves And Make Ourselves.
Art
Myth
Western
When I See My Friends Engaging In A Twitter War For An Afternoon, I Think That Would Destroy Me For A Month.
War
Thinking
Afternoon
The Ideal Reader Cannot Sleep When Holding The Writer He Was Meant To Be With.
Sleep
Were Meant To Be
Reader
This Is What Divorce Is: Taking Things You No Longer Want From People You No Longer Love.
Divorce
People
Want
Those Beliefs About The Essential Goodness Or Beauty Of The World Are Fundamentally Paper-thin Bullshit. There's Not An Essential Belief That Isn't A Contingent Belief. It Could All Be Destroyed In A Second, At Any Second. And I Have An Issue With That.
Issues
Bullshit
Essentials
You Say You Want To Talk, But You Don't . You Stonewall Me.
Want
It Made Me Feel That I Had To Work Very Hard, But I've Always Felt I Had To Work Very Hard To Get My Own Approval.
Approval
Made
Feels
I Never Bought The Idea Of Individual Genius From Which The Novel Spews Forth. It's Always An Act Of Curation.
Ideas
Genius
Individual
An Essential Part Of Power Is The Freedom Not To Think Too Deeply
Thinking
Essentials
These Days, It Feels To Me Like You Make A Devil's Pact When You Walk Into This Country. You Hand Over Your Passport At The Check-in, You Get Stamped, You Want To Make A Little Money, Get Yourself Started... But You Mean To Go Back! Who Would Want To Stay? Cold, Wet, Miserable; Terrible Food, Dreadful Newspapers - Who Would Want To Stay? In A Place Where You Are Never Welcomed, Only Tolerated. Just Tolerated. Like You Are An Animal Finally House-trained.
Country
Mean
Animal
I Was Thinking About The Generation Before Us, Like John Barth And All Of Those Pomo Dudes Who Had That Idea Of, Instead Of Hiding The Structure And Making It Look Organic And Natural, We're Going To Put The Structure On The Outside. But Most Of The Time, At Least For Me, All I Could Attend To [in Swing Time] Was That Act Of Structural Self-consciousness.
Thinking
Swings
Self
Sometimes, One Wants To Have The Illusion That One Is Making Ones Own Life, Out Of Ones Own Resources.
Want
Sometimes
Illusion
Don't Live In A Way That Makes You Feel Dead.
Way
Feels
Surely There Is Something To Be Said For Drawing A Circle Around Our Attention And Remaining Within That Circle. But How Large Should This Circle Be?
Circles
Drawing
Attention
I Have An Ambition To Write A Great Book, But That's Really A Competition With Myself. I've Noticed That A Lot Of Young Writers, People In All Media, Want To Be Famous But They Don't Really Want To Do Anything. I Can't Think Of Anything Less Worth Striving For Than Fame.
Book
Writing
Ambition
Everything Shrinks. Individual Character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
Character
Language
Individual
To Me, These Kind Of Everyday Miseries Act As A Fatal Disqualifier. My Sunniest Beliefs Are Basically Contingent On The Fact That My Child Is Not Dying Of Cancer Right Now.
Children
Cancer
Everyday
People Profess To Have Certain Political Positions, But Their Conservatism Or Liberalism Is Really The Least Interesting Thing About Them.
People
Interesting
Political
A Trauma Is Something One Repeats And Repeats, After All, And This Is The Tragedy Of The Iqbals--that They Can't Help But Reenact The Dash They Once Made From One Land To Another, From One Faith To Another, From One Brown Mother Country Into The Pale, Freckled Arms Of An Imperial Sovereign.
Mother
Country
Land
I Cannot Believe Homosexuality Is That Much Fun. Heterosexuality Certainly Is Not.
Fun
Believe
Heterosexuality
I'm A Writer Who Never Writes About Sex. It's So Far From My Own Fictional World.
Sex
Writing
World
And It's Just Anathema To Being A Writer. It's Not Healthy. But In Another Way, When I'm Writing, What It's About For Me Is Being Good On The Page. None Of That Noise Could Change The Way I Feel About My Writing. Which Is Not Always Particularly Positive.
Writing
Healthy
Noise
The Very Reason I Write Is So That I Might Not Sleepwalk Through My Entire Life.
Writing
Might
Reason
150 Years Ago In [charles] Dickens's Time There Was At Least A Sense Of Craft. So Some Of The Things People Had Inside Of Them, They Had The Possibility Of Expressing In The Making Of Things - Even In A Daily Way With Their Clothes Or Their Food. People Made A Good Deal Of Both Themselves. Now Our Daily Lives Are Almost All Consumption. Craft Plays A Tiny Role.
Clothes
Years
Play
Under Every Friendship There Is A Difficult Sentence That Must Be Said, In Order That The Friendship Can Be Survived.
Order
Said
Difficult
Step Back From Your Facebook Wall For A Moment: Doesn't It, Suddenly, Look A Little Ridiculous? Your Life In This Format?
Wall
Looks
Littles
The Future's Another Country, Man... And I Still Ain't Got A Passport.
Country
Men
Passports
You Become A Different Writer When You Approach A Short Story. When Things Are Not Always Having To Represent Other Things, You Find Real Human Beings Begin To Cautiously Appear On Your Pages.
Real
Insightful
Different
The End Is Simply The Beginning Of An Even Longer Story.
Stories
Ends
First Rule Of Writing: When Still A Child, Make Sure You Read A Lot Of Books. Spend More Time Doing This Than Anything Else.
Children
Book
Writing
'a Reality Shaped Around Your Own Desires' - There Is Something Sociopathic In That Ambition.
Ambition
Reality
Desire
Women Often Have A Great Need To Portray Themselves As Sympathetic And Pleasing, But We're Also Dark People With Dark Thoughts.
Dark
People
Needs
This, After All, Was The Month In Which Families Began Tightening And Closing And Sealing; From Thanksgiving To The New Year, Everybody's World Contracted, Day By Day, Into The Microcosmic Single Festive Household, Each With Its Own Rituals And Obsessions, Rules And Dreams. You Didn't Feel You Could Call People. They Didn't Feel They Could Phone You. How Does One Cry For Help From These Seasonal Prisons?
Dream
New Year
Phones
Our Children Will Be Born Of Our Actions. Our Accidents Will Become Their Destinies. Oh, The Actions Will Remain. It Is A Simple Matter Of What You Will Do When The Chips Are Down, My Friend. When The Fat Lady Is Singing. When The Walls Are Falling In, And The Sky Is Dark, And The Ground Is Rumbling. In That Moment Our Actions Will Define Us. And It Makes No Difference Whether You Are Being Watched By Allah, Jesus, Buddah, Or Whether You Are Not. On Cold Days A Man Can See His Breath, On A Hot Day He Can't. On Both Occasions, The Man Breathes.
Jesus
Children
Wall
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?
Giving Up
Lying
Believe
Your Mid-thirties Is A Good Time Because You Know A Fair Amount, You Have Some Self-control.
Self
Good Times
Knows
He Traced The Genealogy Of The Feeling.
Feelings
Genealogy
I Guess I've Always Written More From The Opposite Perspective, That Kind Of Existentialist Perspective Which Argues That Existence Precedes Essence. And There Really Isn't Anything Essential In There - You're The Product Of Your Actions, Which Can Always Change. And They Retrospectively Make You One Way Or Another.
Essence
Opposites
Perspective
I Lost Many Literary Battles The Day I Read 'their Eyes Were Watching God.' I Had To Concede That Occasionally Aphorisms Have Their Power. I Had To Give Up The Idea That Keats Had A Monopoly On The Lyrical.
Giving Up
Eye
Ideas
Greeting Cards Routinely Tell Us Everybody Deserves Love. No. Everybody Deserves Clean Water. Not Everybody Deserves Love All The Time.
Deserve Love
Water
Cards
It Seems To Me Now That The Deep Structures [in Writing] Are Often Subconscious And Set In Childhood.
Writing
Childhood
Structure
I'm Very Attracted To Exile Literature - Particularly Nabokov - Exactly Because The Idea Of Being Away From Home For Any Serious Length Of Time Is So Inconceivable To Me.
Home
Ideas
Literature
They Had Nothing To Say To Each Other. A Five-year Age Gap Between Siblings Is Like A Garden That Needs Constant Attention. Even Three Months Apart Allows The Weeds To Grow Up Between You.
Weed
Growing Up
Sibling
People Don't Settle For People. They Resolve To Be With Them. It Takes Faith. You Draw A Circle In The Sand And Agree To Stand In It And Believe In It.
Believe
Circles
People
I Don't Ask Myself What Did I Live For, Said Carlene Strongly. That Is A Man's Question. I Ask Whom Did I Live For.
Men
Said
Asks
Last Year, When Zora Was A Freshman, Sophomores Had Seemed Altogether A Different Kind Of Human: So Very Definite In Their Tastes And Opinions, In Ther Loves And Ideas. Zora Woke Up This Morning Hopeful That A Transformation Of This Kind Might Have Visited Her In The Night, But, Finding It Hadn't, She Did What Girls Generally Do When They Don't Feel The Part: She Dressed It Instead.
Girl
Morning
Night
English Fiction Was Something I Loved Growing Up, And It Changed My Life - It Changed The Trajectory Of My Life.
Growing Up
Fiction
Changed
Don’t Romanticise Your ‘vocation’. You Can Either Write Good Sentences Or You Can’t. There Is No ‘writer’s Lifestyle’. All That Matters Is What You Leave On The Page.
Writing
Pages
Matter
For Me, [deep Structures] Might Be Something Very Simply To Do With The Split In My Family. That's Why I'm Always Thinking About Opposites. It's So Childish, Really, But That Might Be Simply What It Is.
Thinking
Opposites
Splits
Pulchritude--beauty Where You Would Least Suspect It, Hidden In A Word That Looked Like It Should Signify A Belch Or A Skin Infection.
Skins
Should
Infection
Time Is How You Spend Your Love.
I Know To Argue Against Our Online Lives Seems Like The Argument Of The Grumpy, Old Luddite Novelist, But I Really Always Try To Make The Argument From The Perspective Of Personal Pleasure.
Perspective
Trying
Novelists
The Past Is Always Tense, The Future Perfect.
Future
Past
Perfect
It's Gotten To A Point Where Everybody Is Concerned About Their Rights And Nobody Is Concerned About Their Duties.
Rights
Duty
Concerned
She Did What Girls Generally Do When They Don't Feel The Part: She Dressed It Instead.
Girl
Feels
I Do My Best Work Under Pressure, So I’ll Nick An Artery, And My Husband Isn’t Allowed To Stanch The Bleeding Till I’ve Banged Out A Chapter.
Husband
Bleeding
Pressure
When A Human Being Becomes A Set Of Data On A Website Like Facebook, He Or She Is Reduced. Everything Shrinks. Individual Character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
Character
Data
Language
You Must Live Life With The Full Knowledge That Your Actions Will Remain. We Are Creatures Of Consequence.
Live Life
Action
Creatures
It Was A Kiss From The Past.
Kissing
Past
Without The Balancing Context Of Everyday Life, All You Have Is The News, And News By Its Nature Is Generally Bad.
Everyday
News
Everyday Life
Rarely Does One See A Squirrel Tremble.
Squirrels
Doe
It’s Such A Confidence Trick, Writing A Novel. The Main Person You Have To Trick Into Confidence Is Yourself. This Is Hard To Do Alone.
Writing
Tricks
Novel
The Arena Of Women's Lives Is Somewhat More Intimate. If A Woman Goes Out With An Incredibly Attractive Man And They Break Up, That Woman Is Not More Attractive To Men. It's Completely Irrelevant To Them. That's An Example Of The Way Women's Minds Work.
Men
Mind
Example
Don't We All Know Why Nerds Do What They Do? To Get Money, Which Leads To Popularity, Which Leads To Girls.
Girl
Nerd
Get Money
When I Was 21 I Wanted To Write Like Kafka. But, Unfortunately For Me, I Wrote Like A Script Editor For The Simpsons Who'd Briefly Joined A Religious Cult And Then Discovered Foucault. Such Is Life.
Religious
Writing
Editors
I Read Carver. Julio Cortázar. Amis's Essays. Baldwin. Lorrie Moore. Capote. Saramago. Larkin. Wodehouse. Anything, Anything At All, That Doesn't Sound Like Me.
Sound
Essays
Like Me
You Don't Come To Live Here Unless The Delusion Of A Reality Shaped Around Your Own Desires Isn't A Strong Aspect Of Your Personality. A Reality Shaped Around Your Own Desires - There Is Something Sociopathic In That Ambition.
Strong
New York
Ambition
Most Of The Cruelty In The World Is Just Misplaced Energy.
Energy
World
Cruelty
I Wrote 'white Teeth' In The Late Nineties. I Didn't Really Feel Trepidatious About It. It Was A Different Time.
White
Teeth
Different
I Recognize Myself To Be An Intensely Naive Person. Most Novelists Are, Despite Frequent Pretensions To Deep Socio-political Insight.
Political
Novelists
Insight
For Me, George Saunders Novel [lincoln In The Bardo] Is About A Problem Of Pain.
Pain
Problem
Novel
It's Difficult To Tell The Truth About How A Book Begins. The Truth, As Far As It Can Be Presented To Other People, Is Either Wholly Banal Or Too Intimate.
Book
People
Telling The Truth
He Had Her In His Heart, But Not Always In His Mind.
Heart
Mind
Sometimes Allah Punishes And Sometimes Men Have To Do It, And It Is A Wise Man Who Knows If It's Allah's Turn Or His Own.
Wise
Men
Sometimes
Where I Come From," Said Archie, "a Bloke Likes To Get To Know A Girl Before He Marries Her." "where You Come From It Is Customary To Boil Vegetables Until They Fall Apart. This Does Not Mean," Said Samad Tersely, "that It Is A Good Idea.
Girl
Fall
Mean
The Lady Was Old, The Lady Was Ill. It Didn't Matter What The Lady Believed.
Matter
Ill
Work On A Computer That Is Disconnected From The ­internet.
Computer
Internet
Disconnected
It's Got Two Aspects. The Bit That Involves The Public Life I Could Not Really Tolerate And Cannot Really Tolerate. I Just Can't Get Used To The Idea Of Being Somebody Unreal In People's Minds. I Can't Live My Life Like That.
Ideas
Two
People
Any Artist Who Aligns Themselves With A Politician Is Making A Category Error Because What Politicians Do Is Not On A Human Scale, It Is On A Geopolitical Scale.
Artist
Errors
Politician
I Have A Natural Tendency To Feel Well About The World, I Suppose, One Way Or Another. But Then There Is The Problem Of Pain. There Are Things Like [abraham] Lincoln's Beloved Little Boy Dying.
Pain
Boys
Dying
I Don't Keep Any Copies Of My Books In The House - They Go To My Mum's Flat. I Don't Like Them Around.
Book
House
Mum
[george Saunders] Is Very Precise About What He Is Doing. There Isn't A Thing Left To Chance.
Chance
Left
Precise
Every Genuinely Literary Style, From The High Authorial Voice To Foster Wallace And His Footnotes-within-footnotes, Requires The Reader To See The World From Somewhere In Particular, Or From Many Places. So Every Novelist's Literary Style Is Nothing Less Than An Ethical Strategy - It's Always An Attempt To Get The Reader To Care About People Who Are Not The Same As He Or She Is.
Writing
Voice
People
Every Moment Happens Twice: Inside And Outside, And They Are Two Different Histories.
Life
Two
Different
I Never Attended A Creative Writing Class In My Life. I Have A Horror Of Them.
Writing
Thinking
Opposites
For Example, You Have These Grotesque, Hilarious, Profane Ghosts In The Book [lincoln In The Bardo]. Even The Concept Of Talking Ghosts Is, From An Aesthetic Point Of View, Grotesque. But You Seem Compelled By That Risk In Order To Get To The Other End Of The Equation.
Book
Views
Order
No Matter What Anyone Says, Suicide Takes Guts. It's For Heroes And Martyrs, Truly Vainglorious Men. Archie Was None Of These. He Was A Man Whose Significance In The Greater Scheme Of Things Could Be Figured Along Familiar Ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack
Suicide
Beach
Ocean
- You Look Fine. - Right. I Look Fine. Except I Don't, Said Zora, Tugging Sadly At Her Man's Nightshirt. This Was Why Kiki Had Dreaded Having Girls: She Knew She Wouldn't Be Able To Protect Them From Self-disgust.
Girl
Men
Self
(and Catholics Give Out Forgiveness At About The Same Rate As Politicians Give Out Promises And Whores Give Out)
Giving
Catholic
Promise
All Tastes Are Expressions Of Belief.
Expression
Taste
Belief
You're A Library Of Me.
Library
Nowadays, I Know The True Reason I Read Is To Feel Less Alone, To Make A Connection With A Consciousness Other Than My Own.
Connections
Consciousness
Reason
We Are So Convinced Of The Goodness Of Ourselves, And The Goodness Of Our Love, We Cannot Bear To Believe That There Might Be Something More Worthy Of Love Than Us, More Worthy Of Worship. Greeting Cards Routinely Tell Us Everybody Deserves Love. No. Everybody Deserves Clean Water. Not Everybody Deserves Love All The Time.
Believe
Deserve Love
Water
It's Easy To Confuse A Woman For A Philosophy
Philosophy
Easy
All Novels Attempt To Cut Neural Routes Through The Brain, To Convince Us That Down This Road The True Future Of The Novel Lies.
Lying
Cutting
Convince Us
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