I don't take notes. I don't have any notebooks. I keep on trying to do that because it seems like a very writerly thing to do, but my mind doesn't work that way. I tend to get the idea for a novel in a big splash.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the creative process of the author, emphasizing a spontaneous rather than structured approach to writing.
Zadie Smith expresses her unique approach to the writing process, where she does not rely on traditional methods such as note-taking or using notebooks. Instead, she describes how her creative ideas arrive in sudden bursts, showcasing the diversity of creative methodologies and the importance of embracing one's individual style.
In practice
A writer sharing their artistic process at a literary event.
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 role of a museum of modern art is to make a good selection and identify what we believe to be the coming movements, and that requires taste.
In the waking dreams our societies permit, in our myths, our arts, our songs, we celebrate the nonbelongers, the different ones, the outlaws, the freaks.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.
A rapid rendering of a landscape represents only one moment of its existence. I prefer, by insisting upon its essential character, to risk losing charm in order to gain greater stability.
The laws of the colors are unutterably beautiful, just because they are not accidental.
My writing is jagged and harsh, I want it to remain that way; I don't want it smoothed out.
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