People profess to have certain political positions, but their conservatism or liberalism is really the least interesting thing about them.
Interpretation
Political labels are superficial and don't capture the complexity of individuals.
In this quote, Zadie Smith suggests that the political affiliations people claim do not define their entire identity. Instead, she argues that individuals are far more complex than their conservative or liberal labels, highlighting the richness of human experience that transcends political views.
In practice
In a debate about political ideologies, one might use this quote to illustrate that people's beliefs are multi-faceted.
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 law of nature is alternation for evermore. Each electrical state superinduces the opposite. The soul environs itself with friends, that it may enter into a grander self-acquaintance or solitude; and it goes alone for a season, that it may exalt its conversation or society.
If we think we have ours and don't owe any time or money or effort to help those left behind, then we are a part of the problem rather than the solution to the fraying social fabric that threatens all Americans and the very dream that is America.
We should forget about small efficiencies, say about 97% of the time: premature optimization is the root of all evil. Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3%
Despite the obvious emphasis of Scripture (in regard to suffering), we are bombarded by suggestions that the 'successful' Christian living takes place in the realm of constant victory, health, wholeness, and financial prosperity. In response to this we are not to pretend that suffering doesnβt exist or that it might be instantly cured. Such notions are the product of empty heads and closed Bibles.
I do not like to get the news, because there has never been an era when so many things were going so right for so many of the wrong persons.
Intuitive versus analytical? That's a foolish choice. It's foolish, just like trying to choose between being realistic or idealistic. You need both in life.
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