Whether we still know, in Britain, what a better life is, what its necessary conditions are and how to achieve them, is what’s now in doubt." ("Fences: A Brexit Diary" )

Importance: Here, Smith addresses the vote in the U.K. to leave the European Union. Based on British hostility towards immigrants, many of whom are simply seeking a better life for themselves and their families, Smith questions whether Britons have lost touch with their definition of what constitutes a "better life."

If novelists know anything it's that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities." ("On Optimism and Despair")

Importance: In this quote, Smith draws upon her expertise and status as a novelist to argue that humans are "internally plural." By this, Smith means that not only are human populations diverse in the aggregate, but that individuals are also, within themselves, diverse, complex and contradictory.

It's a cruel portrait of us: 500 million... ("Generation Why?")