A lecture by Zadie Smith: Why Write?

Zadie Smith (author of White Teeth and other novels) gave a guest lecture today at the nearby university, and she said some extremely gratifying things—gratifying because they're things I feel but don't hear said much, about writing. The thing I underlined and circled most enthusiastically in my notes was this:

Writing lets you have the one thing that society offers in theory and obliterates in practice: self-determination. When I write, I escape [hard-and-fast roles as wife, mother, teacher,...