I'm very attracted to exile literature - particularly Nabokov - exactly because the idea of being away from home for any serious length of time is so inconceivable to me.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the author's fascination with literature about exile, highlighting the profound connection to home and the discomfort of being away from it.
Zadie Smith reflects on her intrigue with exile literature, particularly the works of Vladimir Nabokov, revealing her deep-rooted connection to the notion of home. She conveys that the thought of being away from home for an extended period is unfathomable, suggesting that such literature resonates with her because it explores themes of displacement and longing, which contrast sharply with her own experiences.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing themes of belonging and identity.
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.
Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.
Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts - the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
What being a socialist means is... that you hold out... a vision of society where poverty is absolutely unnecessary, where international relations are not based on greed... but on cooperation... where human beings can own the means of production and work together rather than having to work as semi-slaves to other people who can hire and fire.
We need to confront honestly the issue of scale... You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.
A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers.
Man must be disciplined, for he is by nature raw and wild.
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