Jane Smiley

People are quite frequently eccentric.

— Jane Smiley

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

— Jane Smiley

My mom was paranoid about my safety.

— Jane Smiley

People with good intentions never give up!

— Jane Smiley

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

— Jane Smiley

“He laughed with a kind of mirthless bark.”

— Jane Smiley

“...and the thick, sugary covering of the snow...”

— Jane Smiley

Respect and fear are two different things.

— Jane Smiley

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

— Jane Smiley

I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.

— Jane Smiley

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.

— Jane Smiley

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

— Jane Smiley

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

— Jane Smiley

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

— Jane Smiley

When people leave, they always seem to scoop themselves out of you.

— Jane Smiley

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.

— Jane Smiley

I spent part of my college years in a Marxist commune. I was not a Marxist. I wasn't even pretending to be…

— Jane Smiley

We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news…

— Jane Smiley

It once amused me that it took me three tries to pass my driver's test and that my driving instructor told my…

— Jane Smiley

Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in…

— Jane Smiley

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God,…

— Jane Smiley

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

— Jane Smiley

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

— Jane Smiley

Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind…

— Jane Smiley

After a long day, folk rest at night. After a long summer, folk play games and sit about in the winter. After…

— Jane Smiley

“And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about…

— Jane Smiley

“Laura's gossip was redeemed by its lack of spite. She was warmly objective about every event, taking endless delight in action and…

— Jane Smiley

There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where…

— Jane Smiley

Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn't stand the news, I…

— Jane Smiley

I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up…

— Jane Smiley

a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and…

— Jane Smiley

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen…

— Jane Smiley

Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive…

— Jane Smiley

“I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there…

— Jane Smiley

“Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s how…

— Jane Smiley

“Shame is a distinct feeling. I couldn’t look at my hands around the coffee cup or hear my own laments without feeling…

— Jane Smiley

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance…

— Jane Smiley

“...and that's how the tournament started, the Million Dollar World Series of Monopoly... ...Jess and Pete thought alike -- like city boys,…

— Jane Smiley

You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form,…

— Jane Smiley

“Leaving any bookstore is hard, especially on a day in August, when the street outside burns and glares, and the books inside…

— Jane Smiley