Here are some highlights from Feel Free, via my Twitter self.
The most beautiful phrase I've read today comes from Zadie Smith:
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 11, 2019
"Their muscles seem outlined by a fine pen."
"If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed" ZadieSmith still
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 7, 2019
"I am by nature not a political person and these are the darkest political times I have ever known. My business, such as it is, concerns the intimate lives of people." Zadie Smith, FEEL FREE.
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 7, 2019
A morning dose of Zadie Smith, FEEL FREE: "Back then, we were all still willing to take the 'risk,' if 'risk' is the right word to describe entering into the lives of others, not merely in symbol but in reality."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 6, 2019
From Zadie Smith's essay on Bieber: "All real living is meeting. But what most of us do, most of the time, feels more like 'presenting.' As in: I present myself, with all my individual qualities, to you, and you present yourself back. You experience the style of me, my identity."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 6, 2019
Zadie Smith's got my back when you get upset at my forgetfulness: "I have the kind of brain that erases everything that passes, almost immediately."
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019
"You don't *have* to become a doctor. In fact as long as you don't expect your dreams to be financed in any way whatsoever you are pretty much free to dream your little head off." Zadie Smith on being raised lower middle class.
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019
Warning: there may be a lot of Zadie Smith tweets in coming days. I'm reading FEEL FREE.
— Ian Williams (@ianwillwrite) March 5, 2019
"Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything to stay."