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A review by sureads1
Intimations by Zadie Smith
5.0
this is beautiful.
here are some of my favorite quotes because i have no other words:
“containment is terrible anyway, but how much more frustrating it must be if somewhere in the memory—even if it is only the epigenetic memory—wide-open spaces remain, now utterly out of reach.”
“and having thus placed them in a category similar to the one in which we place animals, he experienced the same fear and contempt we have for animals. animals being both subject to man and a threat to him simultaneously.”
“late in the day, during this strange and overwhelming season of death that collides, outside my window, with the emergence of dandelions, that spring sometimes rises in me, too, and the moon may occasionally tug at my moods, and if i hear a strange baby cry some part of me still leaps to attention—to submission. and once in a while a vulgar strain of spring flower will circumvent a long-trained and self- consciously strict downtown aesthetic. just before an unprecedented april arrives and makes a nonsense of every line.”
“how to dance. how to make yourself up from scraps—from whatever is available. how to be continually surprised by small things, like the spring of a jack-in-the-box, your most treasured toy. here he comes! here he comes! and therefore: how never to be cynical.”
“memory and memorialization as an act of love, completed on behalf of all the other people less organized, less able to remember, and therefore grateful for the prompt. the value of being that person who remembers the childhoods of others better than they themselves recall them, and takes it upon themselves to preserve said childhoods for safekeeping. sending an old friend’s childhood back to them at the very moment they are most in need of it.”
“writing is all resistance”
here are some of my favorite quotes because i have no other words:
“containment is terrible anyway, but how much more frustrating it must be if somewhere in the memory—even if it is only the epigenetic memory—wide-open spaces remain, now utterly out of reach.”
“and having thus placed them in a category similar to the one in which we place animals, he experienced the same fear and contempt we have for animals. animals being both subject to man and a threat to him simultaneously.”
“late in the day, during this strange and overwhelming season of death that collides, outside my window, with the emergence of dandelions, that spring sometimes rises in me, too, and the moon may occasionally tug at my moods, and if i hear a strange baby cry some part of me still leaps to attention—to submission. and once in a while a vulgar strain of spring flower will circumvent a long-trained and self- consciously strict downtown aesthetic. just before an unprecedented april arrives and makes a nonsense of every line.”
“how to dance. how to make yourself up from scraps—from whatever is available. how to be continually surprised by small things, like the spring of a jack-in-the-box, your most treasured toy. here he comes! here he comes! and therefore: how never to be cynical.”
“memory and memorialization as an act of love, completed on behalf of all the other people less organized, less able to remember, and therefore grateful for the prompt. the value of being that person who remembers the childhoods of others better than they themselves recall them, and takes it upon themselves to preserve said childhoods for safekeeping. sending an old friend’s childhood back to them at the very moment they are most in need of it.”
“writing is all resistance”