Zadie Smith

Do you feel this?

And sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is no.

So maybe my preoccupation is stronger.

And I'm sure it just has a quite boring Freudian origin, which is the very large age gap that my parents had.

So I suppose as a child, the question of time was on my mind.

In a way, it might not be if both your parents are 24, you know.

30 years.

Oh, that's a lot.

Yeah, my mother was 20.

My father was 50.

I mean, it was never a good look.

I'm the product of a completely inappropriate relationship, for sure.

But I guess my concern as a child was more...

that it was just i mean my father's been dead a very long time but it was the nature of time travel you know i was living with someone who went to see casablanca in the cinema who saw ella fitzgerald sing live and i was also living with someone who was only 20 years older than me who'd come from a completely different world different islands so it was like space and time travel in my house it was you know interesting what brought them together

Oh, I mean, who knows?

My theory is in the 70s, you could really hate someone and be married to them for 12 years.

And now you could be madly in love and not make it that far.

It was, as they say, a different time.

We had two generations in the same house.

I mean, three, including me.