Zadie Smith, White Teeth Quotes

Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories.

It's still easier to find the correct Hoover bag than to find one pure person, one pure faith, on the globe.

In the end, your past is not my past and your truth is not my truth and your solution - is not my solution.

You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.

Full stories are as rare as honesty.

Cos if it's encyclopedias we've got enough, like, information... and if it's God, you've got the wrong house.

Greeting cards routinely tell us that everybody deserves love. No. Everybody deserves clean water. Not everybody deserves love all of the time.

Sacrifice was nine tenths of parenting.

But why think the more reasons there were to sin, the smaller the sin was?

One just has to look at the thing from a perspective that interests you personally.

That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.

Girls either wanted him or wanted to improve him, but most often a combination of the two. They wanted to improve him until he justified the amount they wanted him.