“Why else had she picked him from a street full of people? Simply because she recognized him. Simply because they were from the same place, he and Mad Mary, which is to say: far away.”
—White Teeth, Zadie Smith, pp 149
“‘Why he leave? He break my heart…Neil, he say his name Neil. Neil, Neil.’ . . . He had expected something similar of Poppy, somehow; he had picked up the phone expecting gentle, rhythmic tears and later on letters, maybe, scented and stained. And in her grief he would have grown, as Neil was probably doing at this moment; her grief would have been an epiphany bringing him one step closer to his own redemption. But instead he had got only ‘Fuck you, you fucking fuck.’ ”
pp 168
“‘Look: you’re a smart cookie, Ire. But you’ve been taught all kinds of shit. You’ve got to reeducate yourself. Realize your value, stop the slavish devotion, and get a life, Irie. Get a girl, get a guy, but get a life.'”
pp 237
“Irie Jones looking for Millat Iqbal,”
pp 243
“But Sir Edmund had always had difficulties retaining enthusiasm and interest. His mind was a small thing with big holes through which passions regularly seeped out, and The Faith of Jamaicans was soon replaced in the inverse sieve of his consciousness by other interests: The Excitability of the Military Hindoo; The Impracticalities of the English Virgin; The Effect of Extreme Heat on the Sexual Proclivities of the Trinidadian.”
pp 254
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