Zadie Smith: Likeness

“She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down.”

“Sometimes you get a flash of what you look like to other people.”

“She hopes for nothing except fine weather and a resolution. She wants to end properly, like a good sentence.”

“They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.”

“Then he gave her a kiss on the forehead that felt like a baptism and she wept like a baby.”

“Pulchritude--beauty where you would least suspect it, hidden in a word that looked like it should signify a belch or a skin infection.”

“For ridding oneself of faith is like boiling seawater to retrieve the salt--something is gained but something is lost.”

“Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. Unrecognizable.”

“He was having an odd paternal rush, a blood surge that was alsoblood and was presently hunting through Howard's expansive intelligence to find words that would more effectively express something like”

“Not everyone wants this conventional little life you’re rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire. And when it’s time for me to go I fully intend to roll off my one-person dinghy into the flames and be consumed. I'm not afraid.”

“Jerome said, It's like, a family doesn't work anymore when everyone in it is more miserable than they would be if they were alone, You know?”

“Fate is a quantity very much like TV: an unstoppable narrative, written, produced and directed by somebody else.”

“Is there anything more likely to take the shine off an affair that when the lover strikes up a convivial relationship with the lovee's mother.”

“His death is like the soft down on the back of your hand, passing unnoticed in the firmest of handshakes, though the slightest breeze makes every damn one of the tiny hairs stand on end.”

“You always wanted to make it clear you weren't like the rest of us. You're still doing it.”

“So we have to be a bit more, I mean, military about it, like plan.”