Zadie Smith White Teeth Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Zadie Smith White Teeth. Here they are! All 100 of them:

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Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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You are never stronger...than when you land on the other side of despair.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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If religion is the opiate of the people, tradition is an even more sinister analgesic, simply because it rarely appears sinister. If religion is a tight band, a throbbing vein, and a needle, tradition is a far homelier concoction: poppy seeds ground into tea; a sweet cocoa drink laced with cocaine; the kind of thing your grandmother might have made.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It's a funny thing about the modern world. You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, "Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He didn't love me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me." Now, how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll---then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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This is what divorce is: taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
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Zadie Smith
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Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Full stories are as rare as honesty.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs - this is how Irie imagined her homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Where I come from," said Archie, "a bloke likes to get to know a girl before he marries her." "Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does not mean," said Samad tersely, "that it is a good idea.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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... don't ever underestimate people, don't ever underestimate the pleasure they receive from viewing pain that is not their own... Pain by itself is just Pain. But Pain + Distance can = entertainment, voyeurism, human interest, cinΓ©ma vΓ©ritΓ©, a good belly chuckle, a sympathetic smile, a raised eyebrow, disguised contempt.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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When the male organ of a man stands erect, two thirds of his intelect go away. And one third of his religion.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Our children will be born of our actions. Our accidents will become their destinies. Oh, the actions will remain. It is a simple matter of what you will do when the chips are down, my friend. When the fat lady is singing. When the walls are falling in, and the sky is dark, and the ground is rumbling. In that moment our actions will define us. And it makes no difference whether you are being watched by Allah, Jesus, Buddah, or whether you are not. On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can't. On both occasions, the man breathes.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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These days, it feels to me like you make a devil's pact when you walk into this country. You hand over your passport at the check-in, you get stamped, you want to make a little money, get yourself started... but you mean to go back! Who would want to stay? Cold, wet, miserable; terrible food, dreadful newspapers - who would want to stay? In a place where you are never welcomed, only tolerated. Just tolerated. Like you are an animal finally house-trained.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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That girl,' tutted Alsana as her front door slammed, 'swallowed an encyclopedia and a gutter at the same time.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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(and Catholics give out forgiveness at about the same rate as politicians give out promises and whores give out)
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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... Clara was a teenage girl like any other; the object of her passion was only an accessory to the passion itself, a passion that through its long suppression was now asserting itself with volcanic necessity.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Please. Do me this one, great favor, Jones. If ever you hear anyone, when you are back home...if ever you hear anyone speak of the East," and here his voice plummeted a register, and the tone was full and sad, "hold your judgment. If you are told 'they are all this' or 'they do this' or 'their opinions are these,' withhold your judgment until all the facts are upon you. Because that land they call 'India' goes by a thousand names and is populated by millions, and if you think you have found two men the same among that multitude, then you are mistaken. It is merely a trick of the moonlight.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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oh he loves her, just as the English loved India & Africa & Ireland; it is the love that is the problem, people treat their lovers badly. but maybe it is just the scenery that is wrong. maybe nothing that happens on stolen ground can expect a happy ending.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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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.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...the end is simply the beginning of an even longer story.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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More silence; children's silence, so desperately desired by adults yet eerie when it finally occurs.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants––packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends––that stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Archie's marriage felt like buying a pair of shoes, taking them home, and finding they don't fit.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Because this is the other thing about immigrants ('fugees, Γ©migrΓ©s, travellers): they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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So there existed fathers who dealt in the present, who didn't drag ancient history around like a ball and chain. So there were men who were not neck-deep and sinking in the quagmire of the past.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist. But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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You are never stronger, thought Samad as approached the doctor, than when you land on the other side of despair.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Early in the morning, late in the century, Cricklewood Broadway.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Faith is hard to achieve, easy to lose.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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No matter what anyone says, suicide takes guts. It's for heroes and martyrs, truly vainglorious men. Archie was none of these. He was a man whose significance in the Greater Scheme of Things could be figured along familiar ratios: Pebble : Beach Raindrop : Ocean Needle : Haystack
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Life was an enormous rucksack so impossibly heavy that, even though it meant losing everything, it was infinitely easier to leave all baggage here on the roadside and walk into the blackness.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It seems to me,' said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, 'that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.' Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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I'm serious. I don't know how you work like that. My school shit is better organized, and I'm not in the business of World Domination.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Girls either wanted him or wanted to improve him, but most often a combination of the two. They wanted to improve him until he justified the amount they wanted him.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Some of us are happy with our African hair, thank you very much. I don't want some poor Indian girl's hair. And I wish to God I could buy black hair products from black people for once. How we going to make it in this country if we don't make our own business?
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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And the sins of the Eastern father shall be visited upon the Western sons. Often taking their time, stored up in the genes like baldness or testicular carcinoma, but sometimes on the very same day.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It's like that quote: 'If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.' The choice between a duty or a principle, you know?
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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He talked and talked, the kind of talking you do to stave off the inevitable physical desire, the kind of talking that only increases it.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It was a competition in agony. Like rich women in posh restaurants ordering ever-smaller salads.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Archie says -Science- the same way he says -Modern-, as if someone has lent him the words and made him swear not to break them.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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13.5 Mrs. Wolfe asks whether Mr. Iqbal expects her Susan to undertake compulsory headstands. 13.6 Mr. Iqbal infers that, considering Susan's academic performance and weight problems, a headstand regime might be desirable.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over irie, was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page. (p.332)
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...at any time of the day, corduroy is a highly stressful fabric. Rent collectors wear it. Tax collectors, too. History teachers add leather elbow patches.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Sometimes Allah punishes and sometimes men have to do it, and it is a wise man who knows if it's Allah's turn or his own.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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For he is in a past-tense, future-perfect kind of mood.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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On cold days a man can see his breath, on a hot day he can’t. On both occasions, the man breathes.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Four months in the life of a seventeen-year-old is the stuff of swings and roundabouts;... Never again in your life do you possess the capacity for such total personality overhaul.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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But surely to tell these tall tales and others like them would be to spread the myth, the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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She knows what it means. Oh, wonderfully bright at 6 a.m., yes, wonderfully clear for an hour. But the shorter the days, the longer the nights, the darker the house, the easier it is, the easier it is, the easier it is, to mistake a shadow for the writing on the wall, the sound of overland footsteps for the distant crack of thunder, and the midnight chime of a New Year clock for the bell that tolls the end of the world.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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We are split people. For myself, half of me wishes to sit quietly with legs crossed, letting the things that are beyond my control wash over me. But the other half wants to fight a holy war. Jihad! And certainly we could argue this out in the street, but I think, in the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution---it is not my solution. So I do not know what it is you would like me to say. Truth and firmness is one suggestion, though there are many people you can ask if that answer does not satisfy. Personally, my hope lies in the last days. The prophet Muhammad---peace be upon Him!---tells us that on the Day of Resurrection everyone will be struck unconscious. Deaf and dumb. No chitchat. Tongueless. And what a bloody relief that will be.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Some people--Samad for example--will tell you not to trust people who overuse the phrase "at the end of the day"--football managers, estate agents, salesmen of all kinds--but Archie's never felt that way about it. Prudent use of said phrase never failed to convince him that his interlocutor was getting to the bottom of things, to the fundamentals.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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It seems to me," said Magid finally, as the moon became clearer than the sun, "that you have tried to love a man as if he were an island and you were shipwrecked and you could mark the land with an X. It seems to me it is too late in the day for all that.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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This has been the century of strangers, brown, yellow and white. This has been the century of the great immigrant experiment. It is only this late in the day that you can walk into a playground and find Isaac Leung by the fish pond, Danny Rahman in the football cage, Quang O’Rourke bouncing a basketball, and Irie Jones humming a tune. Children with first and last names on a direct collision course. Names that secrete within them mass exodus, cramped boats and planes, cold arrivals, medical checks. It is only this late in the day, and possibly only in Willesden, that you can find best friends Sita and Sharon, constantly mistaken for each other because Sita is white (her mother liked the name) and Sharon is Pakistani (her mother thought it best β€” less trouble).
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Involved is neither good nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other's pockets... one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to becoming uninvolved.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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The shit is *not* the shit (this was Mo's mantra,) the *pigeon* is the shit.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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...when all the time it was that grand tree, taking up half the garden with its roots and not allowing anything else to grow.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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And underneath it all, there remained an ever-present anger and hurt, the feeling of belonging nowhere that comes to people who belong everywhere. It
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the saltβ€”something is gained but something is lost.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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I am from the Kilburn branch of the Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," said Hifan proudly. Irie inhaled. Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation," repeated Millat, impressed. "That's a wicked name. It's got a wicked kung-fu arse sound to it." Irie frowned. "KEVIN?" We are aware," said Hifan solemnly, pointing to the spot underneath the cupped flame where the initials were minutely embroidered, "that we have an acronym problem.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems some long, dirty lie... and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter?
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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In short, it was precisely the kind of friendship and Englishman makes on holiday, that he can make only on holiday. A friendship that crosses class and color, a friendship that takes as its basis physical proximity and survives because the Englishman assumes the physical proximity will not continue.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Getting anything out of my husband is like trying to squeeze water out when you're stoned.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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If someone asked her just then what memory was, what the purest definition of memory was, she would say this: the street you were on when you first jumped in a pile of dead leaves. She was walking it right now. With every fresh crunch came the memory of previous crunches. She was permeated by familiar smells: wet woodchip and gravel around the base of the tree, newly laid turd underneath the cover of soggy leaves. She was moved by these sensations.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Blimey, thought Kelvin, what an eye-to-face ratio. When you want to say something delicate, you don't want that eye-to-face ration staring up at you. Big eyes, like a child's or a baby seal's; the physiognomy of innocence--looking at Archie Jones is like looking at something that expects to be clubbed round the head any second.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other’s rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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But Archie did not pluck Clara Bowden from a vacuum. And it's about time people told the truth about beautiful women. They do not shimmer down staircases. They do not descend, as was once supposed, from on high, attached to nothing other than wings. Clara was from somewhere. She had roots.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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And in the past, Archie wondered, was it just that fewer people cheated? Were they more honest, and did they leave their front doors open, did they leave their kids with the neighbors, pay social calls, run up tabs with the butcher? The funny thing about getting old in a country is people always want to hear that from you. They want to hear it really was once a green and pleasant land. They need it.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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The golden age of Luncheon Vouchers ended ten years ago. For ten years Mickey had been saying, β€œThe golden age of Luncheon Vouchers is over.” And that’s what Archie loved about O’Connell’s. Everything was remembered, nothing was lost. History was never revised or reinterpreted, adapted or whitewashed. It was as solid and as simple as the encrusted egg on the clock.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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A neutral place. The chances of finding one these days are slim, maybe even slimmer than Archie’s pinball trick. The sheer quantity of shit that must be wiped off the slate if we are to start again as new. Race. Land. Ownership. Faith. Theft. Blood. And more blood. And more. And not only must the place be neutral, but the messenger who takes you to the place, and the messenger who sends the messenger. There are no people or places like that left…
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Where you come from it is customary to boil vegetables until they fall apart. This does mean,' said Samad tersely, 'that it is a good idea.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Secondo l'esperienza di Archie, qualunque cosa dotata di memoria lunga mantiene i rancori, e non va per niente bene tenere animaletti domestici con ragioni di rancore (quella volta mi hai dato il cibo sbagliato, quell'altra mi hai fatto il bagno).
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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He knew that he, Millat, was a Paki no matter where he came from; that he smelled of curry; had no sexual identity; took other people’s jobs; or had no job and bummed off the state; or gave all the jobs to his relatives; that he could be a dentist or a shop-owner or a curry-shifter, but not a footballer or a filmmaker; that he should go back to his own country; or stay here and earn his bloody keep; that he worshiped elephants and wore turbans; that no one who looked like Millat, or spoke like Millat, or felt like Millat, was ever on the news unless they had recently been murdered.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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... il tutto in diverse sfumature di grigio, celeste, verde scuro, perchΓ© in base a una ricerca, questi sono i colori che la gente associa a "scienza e tecnologia" (il viola e il rosso evocano le arti, l'azzurro scuro sta a significare "qualitΓ  e/o merci scelte")...
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greetings cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Ahhh, now, you see, we’ve been through this, and my thought is this: there’s no smoke without fire,” Archie would say, looking impressed by the wisdom of his own conclusion. β€œKnow what I mean?” This was one of Archie’s preferred analytic tools when confronted with news stories, historical events, and the tricky day-to-day process of separating fact from fiction. There’s no smoke without fire. There was something so vulnerable in the way he relied on this conviction, that Samad never had the heart to disabuse him of it. Why tell an old man that there can be smoke without fire as surely as there are deep wounds that draw no blood?
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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The other cyclists used to take breaks to watch him do it. Lean their bikes against the incline and time him with the second hand of their wristwatches. 62.8 every time. That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Involved. At least that was the right word, Alsana reflected, as she liftes her foot off the pedal, and let the wheel spin a few times alone before coming to a squeaky halt. Sometimes, here in England, especially at bus-stops and on the daytime soaps, you heard people say β€œWe’re involved with each other,” as if this were a most wonderful state to be in, as if one chose it and enjoyed it. Alsana never thought of it that way. Involved happened over a long period of time, pulling you in like quicksand. Involved is what befell the moon-faced Alsana Begum and the handsome Samad Miah one week after they’d been pushed into a Delhi breakfast room together and informed they were to marry. Involved was the result when Clara Bowden met Archie Jones at the bottom of some stairs. Involved swallowed up a girl called Ambrosia and a boy called Charlie (yes, Clara had told her that sorry tale) the second they kissed in the larder of a guest house. Involved is neither good, nor bad. It is just a consequence of living, a consequence of occupation and immigration, of empires and expansion, of living in each other’s pockets… one becomes involved and it is a long trek back to being uninvolved. And the woman was right, one didn’t do it for one’s health. Nothing this late in the century was done with health in mind. Alsana was no dummy when it came to the Modern Condition. She watched the talk shows, all day long she watched the talk shows β€” My wife slept with my brother, My mother won’t stay out of my boyfriend’s life β€” and the microphone holder, whether it be Tanned Man with White Teeth or Scary Married Couple, always asked the same damn silly question: But why do you feel the need…? Wrong! Alsana had to explain it to them through the screen. You blockhead; they are not wanting this, they are not willing it β€” they are just involved, see? They walk IN and they get trapped between the revolving doors of those two v’s. Involved. Just a tired inevitable fact. Something in the way Joyce said it, involved β€” wearied, slightly acid β€” suggested to Alsana that the word meant the same thing to hear. An enormous web you spin to catch yourself.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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But I cannot be worrying-worrying all the time about the truth. I have to worry about the truth that can be lived with. And that is the difference between losing your marbles drinking the salty sea, or swallowing the stuff from the streams. My Niece-of-Shame believes in the talking cure, eh?" says Alsana, with something of a grin. "Talk, talk, talk and it will be better. Be honest, slice open your heart and spread the red stuff around. But the past is made of more than words, dearie. We married old men, you see? These bumps"--Alsana pats them both --"they will always have daddy-long-legs for fathers. One leg in the present, one in the past. No talking will change this. Their roots will always be tangled. And roots get dug up. Just look in my garden - birds at the coriander every bloody day...
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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..to put it in the modern parlance, this is a re-run. We have been here before. This is like watching TV in Bombay or Kingston or Dhaka, watching the same old British sitcoms spewed out to the old colonies in one tedious, eternal loop. Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - something to do with that experience of moving West to East or East to West or island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things Zadie Smith, White Teeth Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance Hiromi Kawakami, Strange Weather in Tokyo Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Attia Hosain, Sunlight on a Broken Column Ali Smith, There But For The These books found me at just the right time in my life. I can remember each of them so vividly, I remember the characters as though they were friends, sometimes even family, I can remember exactly where I was and how I felt when I turned that final page. They’ve stayed with me ever since.
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Sara Nisha Adams (The Reading List)
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But as the prey evolves (and we are prey to the Mad who are pursuing us, desperate to impart their own brand of truth to the hapless commuter) so does the hunter, and the true professionals begin to tire of that old catchphrase β€œWhat you looking at?” begin to tire of that old catchphrase β€œWhat you looking at?” and move into more exotic territory. Take Mad Mary. Oh, the principle’s still the same, it’s still all about eye contact and the danger of making it, but now she’s making eye contact from a hundred, two hundred, even three hundred yards away, and if she catches you doing the same she roars down the street, dreads and feathers and cape afloat, Hoodoo stick in hand, until she gets to where you are, spits on you, and begins.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)
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Did you know this is how other families are?...What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or living room. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-grandfather. And you know why they don't know? Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around relishing, relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They don't spend their time trying to find ways to make their lives more complicated. They just get on with it.
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Zadie Smith (White Teeth)