Victoria

“Doesn't have to be useful,' my mother pressed. 'Art means not having to be useful! In West Africa, for example, a hundred years ago, there were some village women, they were making these strangely shaped pots, impractical pots, and the anthropologists couldn't understand what they were doing, but that was because, they, the scientists, were expecting a quote unquote "primitive" people to make only useful things, when actually they were making the pots just for their beauty - no different from a sculptor - no to collect water, not to hold grain, just for their beauty, and to say: we were here, at this moment in time, and this is what we made.”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“It isn’t annoying, her need—it isn’t a burden. It’s a privilege. I’m responsible. I chose to put myself in a situation where I’m responsible. Wanting to look after her, a small, dependent, vulnerable creature, is innate, and I don’t even have to think about it. It’s like breathing.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“Maybe I put it wrong, I'm not a philosopher. To me it means something simple, like to say the future is already there, waiting for you. Why not wait, see what it brings?”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time

“And you learn all kinds of things, he continued, you learn who the real God of the black man is! Not this blue-eyed, long haired Jesus individual - no! And let me arks you: how comes I never even really heard of him or his name before I get up in there? Look it up. You learn a lot that you can't learn in school, because these people won't tell you nothing, nothing about African kings, nothing about Egyptian queens, nothing about Mohammed, they hide it all, they hide the whole of our history so we feel like we're nothing, we feel like we're at the bottom of the pyramid, that's the whole plan, but the truth is we built the fucking Pyramids.”
― Zadie Smith, Swing Time