Frances

“Chuck functions here as a kind of authenticity fetish, allowing Hans (and the reader) the nostalgic pleasure of returning to a narrative time when symbols and mottoes were full of meaning and novels weren’t neurotic, but could aim themselves simply and purely at transcendent feeling.”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“I gather sentences round, quotations, the literary equivalent of a cheerleading squad. Except that analogy’s screwy—cheerleaders cheer. I put up placards that make me feel bad.”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“When you enter a beloved novel many times, you can come to feel that you possess it, that nobody else has ever lived there. You try not to notice the party of impatient tourists trooping through the kitchen (Pnin a minor scenic attraction en route to the canyon Lolita), or that shuffling academic army, moving in perfect phalanx, as they stalk a squirrel around the backyard (or a series of squirrels, depending on their methodology).”
― Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind: Occasional Essays

“either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.”
― Henry Miller, Stand Still Like the Hummingbird