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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.
-Zadie Smith
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My Short Stories Have

Zadie Smith
...
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.

Understanding the Quote: "my short stories have always pushed twenty pages. that's no length for..."

This quote by Zadie Smith reflects deeply on the theme of trying. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Trying, Twenties, Stories, 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 trying and twenties. 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
Trying
Twenties
Stories
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Step Back From Your Facebook Wall For A Moment: Doesn't It, Suddenly, Look A Little Ridiculous? Your Life In This Format?
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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.
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Rarely Does One See A Squirrel Tremble.
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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.
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I Cannot Believe Homosexuality Is That Much Fun. Heterosexuality Certainly Is Not.
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Mistake
College
Each Couple Is Its Own Vaudeville Act.
Couple
Vaudeville
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America
People
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People
Interesting
Political
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Girl
Morning
Night
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Errors
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Empowering
Despair
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Firsts
Social Network
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Art
Myth
Western
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Blow
Light
Air
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Soul
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Baby
Kissing
Baptism
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Moving
Islands
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Talking
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Jargon
Hopeless
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Passion
Accessories
Objects
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Sleep
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Reader
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Growing Up
Fiction
Changed
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Boys
Dying
Don't Live In A Way That Makes You Feel Dead.
Way
Feels
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Real
Insightful
Different
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Meaningful
Children
Pain
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Rap
Funny Things
Strange
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Genius
Individual
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Past
Perfect
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Easier
Hoover
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Might
Reason
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Novelists
Insight
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Thinking
Order
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Kissing
Past
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
I Never Attended A Creative Writing Class In My Life. I Have A Horror Of Them.
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Thinking
Opposites
Work On A Computer That Is Disconnected From The ­internet.
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Internet
Disconnected
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Thinking
Opposites
Splits
You're A Library Of Me.
Library
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Writing
Ambition
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Artist
Reality
Rapper
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Book
People
Telling The Truth
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Perception
Details
Attention
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Women
Knowing
Awkward
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People
Miracle
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Approval
Made
Feels
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.
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People
Historical
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
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
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
When The Male Organ Of A Man Stands Erect, Two Thirds Of His Intelect Go Away. And One Third Of His Religion.
Men
Two
Going Away
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
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
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
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.
Book
People
Fiction
The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Love Is That It Sets You Free.
Love
Lying
African American
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
In A Whisper He Began Begging For—and, As The Sun Set, Received—the Concession People Always Beg For: A Little More Time.
People
Littles
Sun
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
I Am Very Selfish, Really. I Lived For Love.
Selfish
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?
Would Be
Miserable
Said
- 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.
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Men
Self
Everything Shrinks. Individual Character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.
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Language
Individual
One Thing You Learn About The Novel As A Form Is That It's Always Smarter Than You Are.
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Novel
Smarter
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
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
(and Catholics Give Out Forgiveness At About The Same Rate As Politicians Give Out Promises And Whores Give Out)
Giving
Catholic
Promise
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
It Seems To Me Now That The Deep Structures [in Writing] Are Often Subconscious And Set In Childhood.
Writing
Childhood
Structure
The Nineties, Ecstatic Decade!
Ecstatic
Decades
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.
Writing
Thinking
People
Any Woman Who Counts On Her Face Is A Fool.
Faces
Fool
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
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
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
Your Mid-thirties Is A Good Time Because You Know A Fair Amount, You Have Some Self-control.
Self
Good Times
Knows
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
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
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 Often Worry That My Idea Of Personhood Is Nostalgic, Irrational, Inaccurate.
Ideas
Worry
Nostalgic
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
Anyone Over The Age Of Thirty Catching A Bus Can Consider Himself A Failure.
Age
Thirty
Catching
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.
Fun
Artist
Thinking
I'm Not Sure If You're The Person For Me Any More.
Not Sure
Persons
Ifs
All Tastes Are Expressions Of Belief.
Expression
Taste
Belief
[george Saunders] Is Very Precise About What He Is Doing. There Isn't A Thing Left To Chance.
Chance
Left
Precise
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
You Can't State Difference And Also State Equality. We Have To State Sameness To Understand Equality.
Differences
States
Sameness
The Future's Another Country, Man... And I Still Ain't Got A Passport.
Country
Men
Passports
... Don't Ever Underestimate People, Don't Ever Underestimate The Pleasure They Receive From Viewing Pain That Is Not Their Own... Pain By Itself Is Just Pain. But Pain + Distance Can = Entertainment, Voyeurism, Human Interest, Cinéma Vérité, A Good Belly Chuckle, A Sympathetic Smile, A Raised Eyebrow, Disguised Contempt.
Pain
Distance
Eyebrows
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.
Simple
Tv Shows
Political
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
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
Most Of The Cruelty In The World Is Just Misplaced Energy.
Energy
World
Cruelty
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
Sadness
Hands
The Library Was The Place I Went To Find Out What There Was To Know. It Was Absolutely Essential.
Library
Essentials
Knows
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
(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
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
Make Sure The Lubricant Is Unscented. Don't Join Fashionable 'schools Of Thought.' Read Everything.
School
Fashionable
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
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
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
Sometimes You Get A Flash Of What You Look Like To Other People.
People
Looks
Sometimes
You Must Live Life With The Full Knowledge That Your Actions Will Remain. We Are Creatures Of Consequence.
Live Life
Action
Creatures
I Find It Impossible To Experience Either Pride Or Shame Over Accidents Of Genetics In Which I Had No Active Part. I'm Not Necessarily Proud To Be Female. I Am Not Even Proud To Be Human — I Only Love To Be So.
Pride
Female
Proud
The Idea That Motherhood Is Inherently Somehow A Threat To Creativity Is Just Absurd.
Creativity
Motherhood
Ideas
This Is What Divorce Is: Taking Things You No Longer Want From People You No Longer Love.
Divorce
People
Want
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
He Traced The Genealogy Of The Feeling.
Feelings
Genealogy
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
It's Easy To Confuse A Woman For A Philosophy
Philosophy
Easy
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.
Sublime
Balance
Half
It Has Historically Been A Comfort For The Bourgeois And That You Can Read The Most Extreme Books And Not Change. You Can Read A Christmas Carol And Not Change In Any Way.
Book
Comfort
Way
'a Reality Shaped Around Your Own Desires' - There Is Something Sociopathic In That Ambition.
Ambition
Reality
Desire
The Secret To Editing Your Work Is Simple: You Need To Become Its Reader Instead Of Its Writer.
Simple
Editing
Secret
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
It's Gotten To A Point Where Everybody Is Concerned About Their Rights And Nobody Is Concerned About Their Duties.
Rights
Duty
Concerned
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.
Would Be
Lasts
Firsts
Don't Confuse Honours With Achievement.
Achievement
Honour
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
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
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
The World Is Now Multicultural The Same Way The World Is Round. It's Not A Selling Point, It's Not A 'quirky' Feature, It's Not A Cynical Marketing Ploy, It's Not An Artistic Statement, It's Not Even A Plot Device. It's A Fact, Like Seedless Grapes.
Cynical
Marketing
Quirky
I'm A Writer Who Never Writes About Sex. It's So Far From My Own Fictional World.
Sex
Writing
World
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
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
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
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