Zadie Smith: “All that matters is what you leave on the page”

“Don’t romanticise your ‘vocation.’ You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no ‘writer’s lifestyle.’ All that matters is what you leave on the page.”

~ Zadie Smith

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“All that matters is what you leave on the page”—you know, I think that is so true. The full quote comes from Zadie Smith’s 10 Rules Of Writing, published by The Guardian newspaper in 2010.

Maria Popova described Smith’s 10 Rules as her favourite of the series, “an exquisite balance of the practical, the philosophi...