I have an ambition to write a great book, but that's really a competition with myself. I've noticed that a lot of young writers, people in all media, want to be famous but they don't really want to do anything. I can't think of anything less worth striving for than fame.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the pursuit of personal growth over the superficial desire for fame.
Zadie Smith emphasizes the importance of having a strong personal ambition, such as writing a great book, rather than seeking fleeting fame. She criticizes the tendency of many young creatives to prioritize recognition and popularity over genuine artistic achievement and the hard work necessary to accomplish meaningful goals.
In practice
In a motivational speech for aspiring writers, I quoted Zadie Smith to inspire them to focus on their craft rather than the allure of fame.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
The relation of patience to iman is like the relation of the head to the body. If the head is chopped off, the body becomes useless. Then he raised his voice and said: Certainly, the one who has no patience has no iman, and patience is like a riding-beast that nevers gets tired
Smart people believe weird things because they are skilled at defending beliefs they arrived at for non-smart reasons.
Superhuman power is not strong enough.
O unfathomable depth! O Deity eternal! O deep ocean! What more could You give me than to give me Yourself?
All the things you're not supposed to do at the beginning of your professional life - transgressiveness, arbitrariness and violating expectations - you find more attractive at the end of your professional life.
Gradually I came to realize that people will more readily swallow lies than truth, as if the taste of lies was homey, appetizing: a habit.
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