“If living is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various… — Jane Smiley Books Copy Share Image
Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as… — Jane Smiley Day Copy Share Image
“War is inevitable when the world is fallen. If you stop one, another will start. Redemption is the only path away from… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
If there's anything Trollope novels always take seriously, it is money - how it flows from one character to another, how it… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. — Jane Smiley Desire Copy Share Image
“I dream about standing in the lunch line naked. It's always the lunch line in ninth grade. Nakedness dreams are very common.… — Jane Smiley Dream Copy Share Image
A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together. — Jane Smiley Adventure Copy Share Image
Some novelists are luckier than others in the eras of their formative intellectual years, but all Weltanschauungs return, which means that most… — Jane Smiley Chance Copy Share Image
“She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who… — Jane Smiley Children Copy Share Image
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting… — Jane Smiley Autobiography Copy Share Image
There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s,… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
“She did not think it any coincidence that ideas denigrating literary authorship had taken center stage simultaneously with the emergence of formerly… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions… — Jane Smiley Books Copy Share Image
Every novel deals with social problems. It can't help it because the protagonist must come in conflict with his group. So the… — Jane Smiley Analysis Copy Share Image
Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect. — Jane Smiley Goal Copy Share Image
“At sixty miles per hour, you could pass our farm in a minute, on County Road 686, which ran due north into… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
The brave view is that talking it out helps work it out. Maybe the realistic view is that talking it out inflames… — Jane Smiley America Copy Share Image
Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them. — Jane Smiley Asleep Copy Share Image
Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
I have reared, or helped to rear, five children and the scariest bit, bar none, is the learning-to-drive part. It has filled… — Jane Smiley Anxiety Copy Share Image
With preference came point of view; with point of view, personality; with personality, uniqueness; with uniqueness, grief. — Jane Smiley Aging Copy Share Image
The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others. — Jane Smiley Care Copy Share Image
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting. — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
“I had a burden lift off me that I hadn't even felt the heaviness of until then, and it was the burden… — Jane Smiley Burden Copy Share Image
My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative… — Jane Smiley Anger Copy Share Image
Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom. — Jane Smiley Art Copy Share Image
There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books… — Jane Smiley Book Copy Share Image
A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all… — Jane Smiley Life Copy Share Image
Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've… — Jane Smiley Aging Copy Share Image
I learned why 'out riding alone' is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious… — Jane Smiley Alone Copy Share Image
I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your… — Jane Smiley Character Copy Share Image
Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out… — Jane Smiley Aesthetic Copy Share Image
I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
“Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only… — Jane Smiley Copy Share Image
