Zadie Smith Quotes

Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays.

My scripts, they're pretty serious. I basically just describe stuff. I don't put too many notes and letters to the editors. But when I wrote 'KGBLT,' in parentheses I wrote, 'Well this is the best thing I've ever written. It will all be downhill from here. I'm so sorry for the rest of my career.'

It is true that it is usually for their books that novelists reserve their most considered and ordered thoughts, but the fact is they arise inescapably from one consciousness: the same one that is occupied in all the other activities which make up a life.

I love writing both fiction and memoir. Both have unique challenges; bottom line, fiction is hard because you have to come up with the credible, twisty plot, and memoir is hard because you have to say something true and profound, albeit in a funny way.

Oui, dans mon rêve, j'étais un crayon, mais admittedly, I'd more suitably be characterized as a plump carrot.

Anything where I get to write a lot of jokes and have a lot of creative control - that's all I want.

Do not worry about avoiding temptation. As you grow older it will avoid you.

Something about your life always makes its way into your stories. That's just the nature of the beast.

Writing is making sense of life. You work your whole life and perhaps you've made sense of one small area.

In my personal life, I'm a comic novel. But then, so are we all, because we're human beings.

People say, 'What if your name was Niki Smith?' Well, if Niki Smith lived the life I've lived, it would have great bearing.

Detroit, my 'great' subject, made me the person I am, consequently the writer I am - for better or worse.

I like to think of myself as a character actor, though there's some redundancy in that.

I'm the guy who gets uncomfortable. That's why I was able to write 'The 40-Year-Old Virgin' and 'Knocked Up.' I believe in those guys.

In 'Out of the Dark,' I'm talking about my own life. I'm not talking as a character or speaking as a character. I was not as free as when I write fiction.

I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

The way I write is totally instinctive. I just write what I feel or what I find funny - and hope everyone else agrees.

My act is pretty much me reflecting on what I want to talk about and what I think is funny and what has happened to me.

I guess my writing has changed as my life has.

My point of reference is life, in everything that I do.

And, you know, I liked writing humor. Well, I should say, I wanted to write seriously, but it kept turning funny.

Do not copy my style! The first rule of writing is write about what you know, not what you think you know. So, think about what you've done in your life and write about that.

I'm good at coming up with wacky characters and funny dialogue.