Zadie Smith Quotes

I think sometimes younger people - not necessarily thinkers and intellectuals and the like, but people who are on social media and who are not as informed as journalists or professional thinkers - may get a bit, you know, impatient with the necessity of sustained thinking, sustained argumentation, sustained dialogue.

Between Twitter and Facebook I have nearly 70,000 followers, so my colleagues receive the responses. They show some of them to me, and I am always interested to read what people have to say. I filter all the information that reaches me, from letters in the newspaper, to conversations. There are many influences that shape my decisions, and often people on Twitter are thinking along the same lines as I do on an issue.

Nobody wants to make something that displeases people, but once you make a film, that's out of your control and you can't think about that. You just have to follow your head and make sure that you're satisfied by putting down what you intended.

The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music. It's made me more likely to put things up quickly and treat it more like a magazine instead of a novel.

They're just opinions, what people say about you. None of that stuff's true. The only thing that matters is what you think of yourself.

In an automobile civilization, which was one of constant motion and activity, there was almost no time to think; in a television one, there is small desire.

I don't want my reasons to be informed by what people think about what I'm doing.

I think the opinion is worth less now than it ever has been.

For paranoia about 'what other people think' : remember that only some hate, a very few love - and almost all just don't care.

I think the Internet has definitely made it easier for people to have stuff seen, but it's also encouraged a level of ADD, where you see so much that if it doesn't make an impact on you immediately, you don't look at it.

I gave up on America. I read the Times just to find out what they're thinking. I read blogs. I get most of my best information from people who are there, people who write independently. And there's actually very few of them.

I want to - on behalf of myself, and I think on behalf of a majority of the American people, say that, you know, our word is good.

There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profits... All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment.

Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. The best moment of my lifewas the day I realized that I know longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That's enormously liberating and freeing, and it's the only way to live your life and do your business.

I don't spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself - and if other people like it, that's great.

For the records I've work on over the last 10 years, I get sent the really compressed version and the non-compressed version, and oftentimes you end up going with the more compressed one because it's what people's ears are attuned to. I think the bigger problem is saturation and people being desensitized.

Being called gorgeous is not a bad thing! But at the same time, I don’t want to thrive on people’s opinions of me.

People can say whatever they want to about me... and I don't get too affected. But I didn't want them to think I was a failure.

I think I prioritize other people's opinions of me very highly, which is not necessarily a good thing - it's a thing that causes a lot of anxiety.

When people want to be liked for what they did, they should stop.

I don't want people to think that I'm standing on the steps of the capitals.

The truth is . . . you think what people want you to think.

People sometimes ask me, "You're still in a primary - why are you criticizing [Donald] Trump?" It's because I don't want what he's saying to stand unanswered.

Now I think liberals have gone from underreacting to Trump and saying that Trump is just a clown and a buffoon, and that Hillary Clinton's going to kick his ass, to now overreacting, and saying, "Oh my God, 60 million people consciously endorsed a white supremacist for president."

I think people loosely use the term 'free speech.' If the market wants to be such that people don't want to watch someone, so be it.