Life Quote by Jane Smiley

“A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.”

Jane Smiley

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Life Lived Life Novelists Reading Reading and writing Two Understood Writing Writing life

More by Jane Smiley

Some novelists are luckier than others in the eras of their formative intellectual years, but all Weltanschauungs return, which means that most novelists have…

Jane Smiley

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There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so…

Jane Smiley

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The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister,…

Jane Smiley

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How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.

Jane Smiley

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You know what getting married is? It's agreeing to taking this person who right now is at the top of his form, full of hopes and ideas, feeling good, looking good, wildly interested in you because you're the same way, and sticking by him while he slowly disintegrates. And he does the same for you. You're his responsibility now and…

Jane Smiley

Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.

Jane Smiley

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“We watched the swimmers and sunbathers and I thought about this. Had I faced all the facts? It seemed like I had, but actually, you never know, just by remembering, how many facts you were allowed to have faced. Your own endurance might be a pleasant fiction allowed you by others who've really faced the facts. The eerie feeling this…

Jane Smiley

“They throw themselves on the waters of the world, and they know they will be borne up.”

Jane Smiley

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everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.

Jane Smiley

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“Shame is a distinct feeling. I couldn’t look at my hands around the coffee cup or hear my own laments without feeling appalled, wanting desperately to fall silent, grow smaller. More than that, I was uncomfortably conscious of my whole body, from the awkward way that the shafts of my hair were thrusting out of my scalp to my feet,…

Jane Smiley

“She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. She looked at Walter, who was so far away from her, all the way at the other end of the table,…

Jane Smiley

Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake…

Jane Smiley

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Of all the people who have affected my life and influenced the choices I've made, none has been more important than my father. I…

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What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and pecularities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of…

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