On beauty Quotes - QuotesSweet | quotesweet.com

Book: On Beauty
Quotes of Book: On Beauty

Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
It was in the air, or so it seemed to Kiki, this hatred of women and their bodies – it seeped in with every draught in the house; people brought it home on their shoes, they breathed it in off their newspapers. There was no way to control it.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Obscurely disappointed, as we sometimes are when the things we profess to dislike don't happen, she looked up abruptly and smiled at him.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Generally she kept her head down, but on the occasions she raised it she was treated to the most intimate of panoramic views: the scattered possessions of the three people she had created. Several small items made her cry: a tiny woollen bootie, a broken orthodontic retainer, a woggle from a cub-scout tie. She had not become Malcolm X's private secretary. She never did direct a movie or run for the Senate. She could not fly a plane. But here was all this.
book-quote feminism inspiration motherhood
Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
It takes a lot of practice to ensure that a whole bottle of Cabernet and a pint of beer makes only a slight dent in your sobriety, but Howard felt he had reached this stage of accomplishment.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Still, in the top left-hand corner, a huge button bought in New York's Union Square in the mid eighties: I myself have never been able to figure out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Hey! 'Hey!'But there was no name to put on the end of Hey and a six foot two black man shouting Hey in a dense crowd does not create easiness wherever he goes.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
{'L}ook, of course I know you and your family have "beliefs",' began Howard uneasily, as if 'beliefs' were a kind of condition, like oral herpes.
book-quote funny values
Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Poor Zora – she lived through footnotes.
book-quote missing-out introvert footnotes
Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
England is not warmer than New England in July or August, that's true. Probably not in June either. But it is warmer in October, November, December, January, February, March, April and May - that is, in every month when warmth matters.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
Harry just wanted Howard to sit down again, start again. There were four more hours of quality viewing lined up before bedtime... all of which he and his son might watch together in silent companionship, occasionally commenting on this presenter's overbite, another's small hands or sexual preference. And this would all be another way of saying: It's good to see you. It's been too long. We're family. But Howard couldn't do this when he was sixteen and he couldn't do it now. He just did not believe, as his father did, that time is how you spend your love.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
They didn't mean it to be like this. But it was like this. Both had other intentions. Howard had knocked on the door eight minutes ago, filled with hope, his heart loosened by music, his mind stunned and opened by the appalling proximity of death. He was a big malleable ball of potential change, waiting on the doorstep. Eight minutes ago. But once inside, everything was the same as it had always been. He didn't mean to be so aggressive, or to raise his voice or to pick fights. He meant to be kind and tolerant. Equally, four years ago, Harry surely hadn't meant to tell his only son that you couldn't expect black people to develop mentally like white people do. He had meant to say: I love you, I love my grandchildren, please stay another day.
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Zadie Smith _ On Beauty
She let Howard reinvent, retouch. When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Hallelujah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki had thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day.
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