Zadie Smith Quotes

Everything I do is just an opportunity to tell a great story.

I believe that, in any novel of mine, the principal objective is the construction of the whole.

Fiction is experimentation; when it ceases to be that, it ceases to be fiction.

I've tried to tell a story. For me, it is the best one.

A good writer is basically a story teller, not a scholar or a redeemer of mankind.

Each book should be an entity unto itself, with its own structure, character, life, name.

The way I express ideas is through the plot, Suspense is an important part of expressing an idea.

Fiction is the best way I know how to think something through.

Most fiction comes from your experience.

I write fiction. I make things up, it's what I do.

Fiction is the thing I esteem most in my own work; I feel that, even if it's no good, only I could have written those books.

Stories have a way of telling themselves.

The only thing I knew about novels from a technical point of view was that they should have conflict.

I think in most cases, when you're writing a song, you're just making up a little story, and you're not really thinking about making a point one way or another about it. You're just coming up with a little scenario and seeing it through, and that's it.

Write your own stories.

While choosing shows, I look at stories and the concept, and that has to be different.

So much emotion goes into writing fiction.

I don't write tracts, I write novels. I'm not a preacher, I'm a fiction writer.

Our task as fiction writers isn't just to report something that didn't really happen. We have to give what we write a sense of reality. The tool of our tradition is language.

I don't think any good book is based on factual experience. Bad books are about things the writer already knew before he wrote them.

You have to have heart's passion to write a novel.

I'm a storyteller, not a prophet. I'm just interested in a good story.

It's with bad sentiments that one makes good novels.

Fiction is very important to me. It's what I do, it's what I do with my life.

I write both fiction and nonfiction. I begin my fiction with the main character. The story comes later.