« Most
of the cruelty in the world is just misplaced energy. »
« Kiki
turned to her husband with a thesis for a face, of which only Howard could know
every line and reference. »
« I’m
sure i twill have proved to be a storm in a teacup. »
« We ?
said Levi, with an expertly raised eyebrow – genetically speaking a direct gift
from his mother. »
« He
thought of his own father again – compared to him, Howard was Phileas Fogg.
Travel had seemed the key to the kingdom, back then. One dreamed of a life that
would enable travel. »
« England
is not warmer than New England in July or August, that’s true. Probably not in
June either. But it is warmer in October, November, December, January,
February, March, April and May – that is, in every month when warmth matters. »
« Like
many academics, Howard was innocent of the world. He could identify thirty
different ideological trends in the social sciences, but did not really know
what a software engineer was. »
« Considering
things too much, all the time, was the definition of who he was. »
« Her
elfin head with its inch of closely
cropped brown hair fitted neatly into her lover’s hand. »
« Poor
Zora – she lived through footnotes. »
« And
how kind of you to invite an old lady who you don’t even know from Adam. »
« I
saw her, she’s so amazing, looks like Nefertiti. Didn’t you think so,
Howard ? Like one of those statuaries in the bottom of the Fitzwilliam, in
Cambridge. You’ve seen those, right ? Such an anciently wonderful
face. »
« Zora
Self-Improvement Programme for the fall : wake early, swim, class, light
lunch, class, library, home. »
« Zora
pushed forward an inch and then launched herself ; the water rushed up to
her neck like a garment she was wearing. »
« He
stood there nodding and smiling as if together they had just cracked the cure
for cancer. »
« Apparently
everybody gets special treatment – blacks, gays, liberals, women – everybody
except poor white males. »
« his
great love was the essay, and, if he were really honest with himself, beyond
essays themselves, the tools of the essayist : dictionaries. It was in the
shady groves of dictionaries that Jack fell in love, bowed his head in awe and
thrilled at an unlikely tale, for example, the bizarre ethymology of the
intransitive verb ‘ramble’. »
« Howard
asked his students to imagine prettiness as the mask that power wears. »
« Just…
what time is the class ?
Howard
sensed the relief in the room. At least she hadn’t asked anything clever. He
could tell that the class as a whole could not abide prettiness and cleverness.
But she had not tried to bec lever. »
« And
Jerome – Jerome’s a water sign. He’s a Scorpio like me. And that’s pretty much
his character. »
« In
this building Oscar Wilde once gave a lecture concerning the superiority of the
lily over all the other flowers. »
« LaShonda
waved her talons in a swift, economical moce, like the spreading of a fan, each
nail clicking off the next. »
« You
don’t even notice it – younever notice. You think it’s normal. Everywhere we
go, I’m alone in this… this sea of white. I barely know any black folk any
more, Howie. My whole life is white. I don’t see any black folk unless they be
cleaning under my feet in the fucking café in you fucking college. Or pushing a
fucking hospital bed through a corridor. I staked my whole life on you. An I
have no idea any more why I did that. »
« What
have you made me look like in front of everybody in this town ? You
married a big black bitch and you run off with a fucking
leprechaun ? »
« At
her right were her friends, greeting her ; at her left, the homeless guy,
jus tat her shoulder, from whom she now moved away, laughing stupidly at the
idea of any connection between them. She was hugged and shaken. Here were
people, friends. A boy called Ron, of delicate build whose movement were tidy
and ironic, who liked to be clean, who like things Japanese. A girl called
Daisy, tall and solid like a swimmer, with an all-American ingénue face, sandy
hair and more of a salty manner than she required, given her looks. Daisy liked
eighties romantic comedies and Kevin Bacon and thrift-store handbags. Hannah
was red-headed and freckled, rational, hard-working, mature. She liked Ezra
Pound and making her own clothes. Here were people. Here were tastes and buying
habits and physical attributes. »
« She
was thankful for yoga ; yoga allowed her to sit cross-legged on a floor
cushion like a much younger woman, camouflaged among her students. »
« Claire
compulsively sabotaged all possibilities of personal happiness. It seemed she
was convinced that it was not happiness that she deserved. »
« She
called a rose a rose. He calle dit an accumulation of cultural and biological
constructions circulating around the mutually attracting binary poles of
nature/artifice. »
« You
looked at Felix and thought : This is what it’s all about, being this
different ; this is what white people fear and adore and want and dread.
He was as purely black as – on the other side of things – those weird Swedish
guys with translucent eyelashes are purely white. It was like, if you looked up
black in a dictionary…. It was awesome. »
« Katie
loves the arts. Given her parents’ relative poverty and limited education, she
knows that it would probably have made more sense for her family if she’d tried
for medical school or even Harvard Law. But her parents are generous, loving
people, and they support her in all her choices. »
« Her
hair, in the manner of old Englsih ladies, was both voluminous and transparent,
each golden curl (blue rinses having recently vanished from these isles) like gauze
through which Howard could see the hallway behind. »
« Howard
ordered a minicab and went outside to wait for it. When it arrived, the
driver’s door opened and a young Turk in the literal sense leaned out and asked
Howard a rather metaphysical question : ‘Is it you ?’ »
« Why
are there are no awards for the girl who starves herself through the Christmas
period – refusing all sweetmeats, roasts and liqueurs offered to her – so that
she might appear at the January formal in a backless dress and toeless shoes,
although the temperature is near to freezing and the snow is heavy upon the
ground ? »
« A
Turkey rug covers the table at which they sit. »
« Then
he laughed and looked at his son with fond wonder. What a period this was to
live through ! His children were old enough to make him laugh. They were
real people who entertained and argued and existed entirely independantly from
him, althoug he had set he thing in motion. They had different thoughts and
beliefs. They weren’t even the same colour as him. They were a kind of
miracle. »
« They
were both nodding a lot. Sadness swept over Jerome. They had nothing to say to
each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs
constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weed to grow up between
you. »
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
