I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the author's fascination with literature about exile, highlighting the profound connection to home and the discomfort of being away from it.
Zadie Smith reflects on her intrigue with exile literature, particularly the works of Vladimir Nabokov, revealing her deep-rooted connection to the notion of home. She conveys that the thought of being away from home for an extended period is unfathomable, suggesting that such literature resonates with her because it explores themes of displacement and longing, which contrast sharply with her own experiences.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing themes of belonging and identity.
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.
If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.
From the proletarians nothing is to be feared. Left to themselves, they will continue from generation to generation and from century to century, working, breeding, and dying, not only without any impulse to rebel, but without the power of grasping that the world could be other than it is.
A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own.
Be very careful. Giving because we think we will get something back will not work. You must be 100 percent willing to give and never experience any return, or it will not work.
Mostly I am sorry for the way I thought of other people. Like a good general, I had treated everyone who wasn't with me as against me.
A man really believes not what he recites in his creed, but only the things he is ready to die for.
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