Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Recorded The Guardian Review, 20 February 2010 source
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Zadie Smith
Novelist and essayist
United Kingdom · b. 1975
English novelist and essayist, author of White Teeth, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, and of the essay collections Changing My Mind and Feel Free. She teaches fiction at New York University.
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Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
Recorded The Guardian Review, 20 February 2010 source
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