Quotes from book
White Teeth
White Teeth is a 2000 novel by the British author Zadie Smith. It focuses on the later lives of two wartime friends—the Bangladeshi Samad Iqbal and the Englishman Archie Jones—and their families in London. The novel is centred around Britain's relationships with people from formerly colonised countries in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.The book won multiple honours, including the 2000 James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction, the 2000 Whitbread Book Award in category best first novel, the Guardian First Book Award, the Commonwealth Writers First Book Prize, and the Betty Trask Award. Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.
“… the wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.”
Variant: A past tense, future perfect kind of night.
Source: White Teeth (2000)
“This is what divorce is: Taking things you no longer want from people you no longer love.”
Source: White Teeth (2000)
“You are never stronger… than when you land on the other side of despair.”
Source: White Teeth
“I cannot believe homosexuality is that much fun. Heterosexuality certainly is not.”
Source: White Teeth
Source: White Teeth (2000)
Context: You hear girls in the toilets of clubs saying, 'Yeah, he fucked off and left me. He just couldn't deal with love. He was too fucked up to know how to love me.' Now how did that happen? What was it about this unlovable century that convinced us we were, despite everything, eminently lovable as a people, as a species? What made us think that anyone who fails to love us is damaged, lacking, malfunctioning in some way? And particularly if they replace us with a god, or a weeping madonna, or the face of Christ in a ciabatta roll—then we call them crazy. Deluded. Regressive. We are so convinced of the goodness of ourselves, and the goodness of our love, we cannot bear to believe that there might be something more worthy of love than us, more worthy of worship. Greeting cards routinely tell us everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all the time.
“… They cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.”
Variant: Because this is the other thing about immigrants: they cannot escape their history any more than you yourself can lose your shadow.
Source: White Teeth (2000)
