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The Secret To Editing Your Work Is Simple: You Need To Become Its Reader Instead Of Its Writer.
-Zadie Smith
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The Secret To Editing

Zadie Smith
...
The Secret To Editing Your Work Is Simple: You Need To Become Its Reader Instead Of Its Writer.

Understanding the Quote: "the secret to editing your work is simple: you need to become..."

This quote by Zadie Smith reflects deeply on the theme of simple. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Simple, Editing, Secret, 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 simple and editing. 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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Simple
Editing
Secret
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You Can't State Difference And Also State Equality. We Have To State Sameness To Understand Equality.
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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.
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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.
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You Must Live Life With The Full Knowledge That Your Actions Will Remain. We Are Creatures Of Consequence.
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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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- 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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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.
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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.
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The Greatest Lie Ever Told About Love Is That It Sets You Free.
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The Lack Of Alternatives To An Illegal Action Does Not Legitimise That Action.
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Protect The Time And Space In Which You Write. Keep Everybody Away From It, Even The People Who Are Most Important To You.
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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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An Essential Part Of Power Is The Freedom Not To Think Too Deeply
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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.
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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.
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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.
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You Say You Want To Talk, But You Don't . You Stonewall Me.
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I Cannot Believe Homosexuality Is That Much Fun. Heterosexuality Certainly Is Not.
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The Golden Age Of Luncheon Vouchers Ended Ten Yearsago. For Ten Years Mickey Had Been Saying, "the Goldenage Of Luncheon Vouchers Is Over." And That's What Archieloved About O'connell's. Everything Was Remembered,nothing Was Lost. History Was Never Revised Orreinterpreted, Adapted Or Whitewashed. It Was As Solid Andas Simple As The Encrusted Egg On The Clock.
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... 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.
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Learning How To Be A Good Reader Is What Makes You A Writer.
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I Never Attended A Creative Writing Class In My Life. I Have A Horror Of Them.
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Thinking
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Two
People
It's Easy To Confuse A Woman For A Philosophy
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Lying
Past
Perfect
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Order
Said
Difficult
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People
Want
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Looks
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Essence
Opposites
Perspective
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Waiting
Feelings
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Novelists
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Two
Different
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Believe
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Fall
Dark
The Object Of The Passion Is Just An Accessory To The Passion Itself.
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Accessories
Objects
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Home
Air
Shoes
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Connections
Consciousness
Reason
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Writing
Might
Reason
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Approval
Made
Feels
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Might
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Artist
Thinking
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Land
Empowering
Despair
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Children
Book
Writing
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Women
Knowing
Awkward
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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Fall
Mean
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Writing
Talking
Honest
I'm Not Sure If You're The Person For Me Any More.
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Persons
Ifs
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Writing
Epic
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Character
Data
Language
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
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
The Future's Another Country, Man... And I Still Ain't Got A Passport.
Country
Men
Passports
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
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
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
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.
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Scared
Peanuts
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
Fate Is A Quantity Very Much Like Tv: An Unstoppable Narrative, Written, Produced And Directed By Somebody Else.
Fate
Narrative
Tvs
For Ridding Oneself Of Faith Is Like Boiling Seawater To Retrieve The Salt--something Is Gained But Something Is Lost.
Salt
Lost
Oneself
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
It's Gotten To A Point Where Everybody Is Concerned About Their Rights And Nobody Is Concerned About Their Duties.
Rights
Duty
Concerned
I'm A Writer Who Never Writes About Sex. It's So Far From My Own Fictional World.
Sex
Writing
World
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 Young People Have A Phrase For This Now, Which Is "slay In Your Lane." That's A Very Important Principle Of Writing. You Have To Work Out What It Is You Can't Do, Obscure It, And Focus On What Works.
Writing
People
Work Out
Then He Gave Her A Kiss On The Forehead That Felt Like A Baptism And She Wept Like A Baby.
Baby
Kissing
Baptism
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
(and Catholics Give Out Forgiveness At About The Same Rate As Politicians Give Out Promises And Whores Give Out)
Giving
Catholic
Promise
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.
Trying
Jargon
Hopeless
The Lady Was Old, The Lady Was Ill. It Didn't Matter What The Lady Believed.
Matter
Ill
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
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
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
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.
Writing
Thinking
Years
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
She Hopes For Nothing Except Fine Weather And A Resolution. She Wants To End Properly, Like A Good Sentence.
Weather
Want
Resolution
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
People Profess To Have Certain Political Positions, But Their Conservatism Or Liberalism Is Really The Least Interesting Thing About Them.
People
Interesting
Political
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
No Fiction, No Myths, No Lies, No Tangled Webs - This Is How Irie Imagined Her Homeland. Because Homeland Is One Of The Magical Fantasy Words Like Unicorn And Soul And Infinity That Have Now Passed Into Language.
Lying
Tangled
Soul
There's A Perception That Novels Can't Usually Allow For Your Kind Of Absolute Attention To Detail.
Perception
Details
Attention
Sometimes You Get A Flash Of What You Look Like To Other People.
People
Looks
Sometimes
World Makers, Social Network Makers, Ask One Question First: 'how Can I Do It?'
World
Firsts
Social Network
You Don't Have Favourites Among Your Children, But You Do Have Allies.
Children
Allies
Your Children
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
Writing Is My Way Of Expressing - And Thereby Eliminating - All The Various Ways We Can Be Wrong-headed.
Writing
Way
Eliminating
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
One Thing You Learn About The Novel As A Form Is That It's Always Smarter Than You Are.
Form
Novel
Smarter
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
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
English Fiction Was Something I Loved Growing Up, And It Changed My Life - It Changed The Trajectory Of My Life.
Growing Up
Fiction
Changed
And Now The Moment. Such A Moment Has A Peculiar Character. It Is Brief And Temporal Indeed, Like Every Moment; It Is Transient As All Moments Are; It Is Past, Like Every Moment In The Next Moment. And Yet It Is Decisive, And Filled With The Eternal. Such A Moment Ought To Have A Distinctive Name; Let Us Call It The Fullness Of Time.
Character
Past
Names
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
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
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
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
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
Don't Confuse Honours With Achievement.
Achievement
Honour
It Was A Kiss From The Past.
Kissing
Past
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
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
[george Saunders] Is Very Precise About What He Is Doing. There Isn't A Thing Left To Chance.
Chance
Left
Precise
Oh, I Know That. You Know Me, Baby, I Cannot Be Broken. Takes A Giant To Snap Me In Half.
Baby
Broken
Giants
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
Stories
Make Sure The Lubricant Is Unscented. Don't Join Fashionable 'schools Of Thought.' Read Everything.
School
Fashionable
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
She Loved You In The Morning Because The Day Was New.
Morning
Desire Is Never Final, Desire Is Imprecise And Impractical [...]
Desire
Finals
The Novel Leads You Places That You Never Could Have Gotten To Otherwise.
Novel
I Was Brought Up With The Sense That I Was Absolutely No Different From My Brothers. I Went To College Thinking I Was Absolutely No Different From The Men In College. But That's Not True. I'm Fundamentally Different. The Problem Was Not Being Able To Understand Difference And Equality At The Same Time. It's Something That We Can't Seem To Comprehend. You Can't State Difference And Also State Equality. We Have To State Sameness To Understand Equality. It's A Mistake.
Brother
Mistake
College
Each Couple Is Its Own Vaudeville Act.
Couple
Vaudeville
I Don't Actually Believe In The Extension Of Consciousness After Death.
Believe
Consciousness
After Death
A Lot Of Women, When They're Young, Feel They Have Very Good Friends, And Find Later On That Friendship Is Complicated. It's Easy To Be Friends When Everyone's 18. It Gets Harder The Older You Get, As You Make Different Life Choices, As People Say In America. A Lot Of Women's Friendships Begin To Founder.
Good Friend
America
People
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
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
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
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
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
He Had Her In His Heart, But Not Always In His Mind.
Heart
Mind
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
The Secret To Editing Your Work Is Simple: You Need To Become Its Reader Instead Of Its Writer.
Simple
Editing
Secret
Cambridge Was A Joy. Tediously. People Reading Books In A Posh Place. It Was My Fantasy. I Loved It. I Miss It Still.
Book
Reading
People
The Idea That Motherhood Is Inherently Somehow A Threat To Creativity Is Just Absurd.
Creativity
Motherhood
Ideas
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
Don't Live In A Way That Makes You Feel Dead.
Way
Feels
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
She Did What Girls Generally Do When They Don't Feel The Part: She Dressed It Instead.
Girl
Feels
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
Work On A Computer That Is Disconnected From The ­internet.
Computer
Internet
Disconnected
Time Is How You Spend Your Love.
It's Not In Good Taste To Have Talking Ghosts In A Grown-up Novel.
Talking
Taste
Ghost
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
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
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
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
The Nineties, Ecstatic Decade!
Ecstatic
Decades
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
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
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
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
The Past Is Always Tense, The Future Perfect.
Future
Past
Perfect
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
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
For Me, George Saunders Novel [lincoln In The Bardo] Is About A Problem Of Pain.
Pain
Problem
Novel
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
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