I wouldn't write about people who are living and who are close to me, because I think it's a very violent thing to do to another person. And anytime I have done it, even in the disguise of fiction, the results have been horrific.

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 suppose I often think of my writing as quite impersonal. But it turned out, when my father died, writing was exactly what I wanted to do.

Zadie Smith Quotes