Some writers are the kind of solo violinists who need complete silence to tune their instruments. Others want to hear every member of the orchestra–they’ll take a cue from a clarinet, from an oboe, even. I am one of those. My writing desk is covered in open novels. I read lines to swim in a certain sensibility, to strike a particular note, to encourage rigour when I’m too sentimental, to bring verbal ease when I’m syntactically uptight. I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka, as roughage. If your aesthetic has become so refined it is stopping you from placing a single black mark on white paper, stop worrying so much about what Nabokov would say; pick up Dostoyevsky, patron saint of substance over style. . Zadie Smith
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  1. Dance above the surface of the world. Let your thoughts lift you into creativity that is not hampered by opinion. - Red Haircrow
  2. What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes. - Charles Bukowski
  3. Some part of me knew from the first that what I wanted was not reality but myth. - Stephen King
  4. No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a... - Erin Bow
  5. I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to... - C. Joybell C.
More Quotes By Zadie Smith
  1. Time is how you spend your love.
  2. People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and...
  3. In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
  4. Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand — but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never ­being satisfied.
  5. Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house.
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