Zadie Smith Quotes

When I sit down to write, I just let the goose out of the bottle.

I don't have a name and I don't have a plot. I have the typewriter and I have white paper and I have me, and that should add up to a novel.

For me, it would be pointless to write a novel that I knew I could complete within a specific length of time. I could do that only by repeating something I had done before, and I've never wanted to do that.

The muse holds no appointments. You can never call on it. I don't understand people who get up at 9 o'clock in the morning, put on the coffee and sit down to write.

Sometimes I think that novelists suffer from P.C.S.: Perpetual Childhood Syndrome.

One reason I don't suffer Writer's Block is that I don't wait on the muse, I summon it at need.

That's the great thing about being a writer. You dream up amazing questions... and then dream up even more amazing answers.

I'm of the ilk of writers that feels you have to be open to the inspiration.

Mostly I sat down and said, 'I'm not going to write a boring story.' And that actually, surprisingly, solves most of your problems.

I don't believe in writer's block.

I get a lot of energy from making things up, which is why I feel I'm a novelist.

For me, the source material can come from anywhere. It can be a poem, it can be a dream, it can be a movie, as long as the end part of it is interesting - that's what it's about for me.

You just have to keep getting out of your own way so that whatever it is that wants to be written can use you to write it.

The reason I start a novel is because there's something that excites me and I want to explore it.

When the initial little impulse comes it just tends to come. I wake up in the middle of the night, or I'll be swimming in the pool with my kids and just think, "Can't forget that one." Then there's the more organized side of the brain, which is when I choose to work on them. I've learned through a bunch of mentors how to demarcate the different times for your writing process. I keep multiple projects going at once and there's a time when no matter what you're doing, you have to stop and write it because it's coming.

You can't wait for someone to give you a show. That can't be the first time you're writing and drawing a character.

I prefer writing originals.

I think novelists should be disciplined and self-imposed working hours. I work a lot, but I don't feel that I'm working. I always feel that there is a child in me, healthy, and I'm playing.

I think in order to keep America great, we have to keep America creative.

Stories come to me and I don't know where they come from, but afterwards I can look back and say, 'Oh yes, that's got a little bit of me, or a little bit of my own son in it'. That's where ideas come from.

I think good artists know when they're on a roll, and they recognize when lightning is striking. It's a very fortunate thing to have that inspiration and not to overanalyze it or mess with it; you just follow it if you love what you do.

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

I would solve a lot of literary problems just thinking about a character in the subway, where you can't do anything anyway.

I write about two hours a day, and I write in fits and spurts - 45 minutes here, a half-hour there - and when I get stuck, which happens often, I take the dogs for a walk. But during the time when I'm not actually writing, I'm thinking.

Weirdly, often the more I write, the more ideas I have.