Cambridge was a joy. Tediously. People reading books in a posh place. It was my fantasy. I loved it. I miss it still.
Zadie SmithLifeโs not a video game, Felix- there arenโt a certain number of points that send you to the next level. There isnโt actually any next level. The bad news is that everybody dies at the end. Game Over.
Zadie SmithThe roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper.
Zadie SmithWhen I see my friends engaging in a Twitter war for an afternoon, I think that would destroy me for a month.
Zadie SmithI was thinking about the generation before us, like John Barth and all of those pomo dudes who had that idea of, instead of hiding the structure and making it look organic and natural, we're going to put the structure on the outside. But most of the time, at least for me, all I could attend to [in Swing Time] was that act of structural self-consciousness.
Zadie Smith