Jane Smiley Quotes & Sayings

Every novel deals with social problems. It can't help it because the protagonist must come in conflict with his group. So the author has to offer an analysis of how the group and the protagonist fit. Otherwise, the reader will just say, "This makes no sense," and will put it away. — Jane Smiley

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, in-laws, and darling nephews. — Jane Smiley

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was. — Jane Smiley

Every novel I've written has been about finding stuff out. I'm motivated much more by curiosity than by self-expression. — Jane Smiley

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance. — Jane Smiley

I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too. — Jane Smiley

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works. — Jane Smiley

Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them. — Jane Smiley

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

People with good intentions never give up! — Jane Smiley

Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation. — 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 one. I was a Marxist-in-law. — Jane Smiley

Once again, the curious thing was how strange and forceful the world was, how it battered and clanged and could not be withstood, and yet some individuals withstood it while others did not. — Jane Smiley

Who you are shapes how you are loved. — Jane Smiley

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it. — Jane Smiley

My great fear is not that I'll run out of ideas. It's that I'll run out of time. — Jane Smiley

The two of them prayed to Jesus that they might learn their lessons sooner rather than later, and that they would be gentle lessons rather than hard lessons. — Jane Smiley

I thought about having sex with Jess Clark and I could feel my flesh turn electric at these thoughts, cold feel sensation gather at my nipples, could feel my vagina relax and open, could feel my lips and fingertips grow sensitive enough to know their own shapes. — Jane Smiley

One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, everything-will-turn-out-okay-in-the-end philosophy of economics in order to justify their own evil works. And the economists, for the most part, have sucked up to that money. — Jane Smiley

A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site - stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct. — Jane Smiley

Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable. — Jane Smiley

And that's how the tournament started, the Million Dollar World Series of Monopoly ...
... Jess and Pete thought alike
like city boys, my father would have said, looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall. Rose and Ty and I played like farmers, looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs, something small that will tip the tractor, break it, eat into your time, your crop, the profits that already exist in your mind, and not only as a result of crop projections and long-range forecasts, but also as an ideal that has never been attained, but could be this year. — Jane Smiley

There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where many horses are gathered together, where year after year, decade after decade, they do the same, rather simple thing - run in races and try to win. — Jane Smiley

I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment. — Jane Smiley

Eavesdrop and write it down from memory - gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop! — Jane Smiley

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

A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system. — Jane Smiley

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high. — Jane Smiley

Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!' — Jane Smiley

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life. — Jane Smiley

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too. — Jane Smiley

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

We knew right off how to think of them but not precisely how to feel about them. — Jane Smiley

She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity. — 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, 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 he's yours. If no one else will take care of him, you will. If everyone else rejects you, he won't. What do you think love is? Going to bed all the time? — Jane Smiley

Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect. — Jane Smiley

When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong? — Jane Smiley

In this flirtation he was conducting, he had had to rely entirely on his personality, never a good idea. — Jane Smiley

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

What Is Really Going On in Spain? was another. Who's the Boss? was about whether members of the — Jane Smiley

Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions. — Jane Smiley

My mom was paranoid about my safety. — Jane Smiley

All equestrians, if they last long enough, learn that riding in whatever form is a lifelong sport and art, an endeavor that is both familiar and new every time you take the horse out of his stall or pasture. — Jane Smiley

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting. — Jane Smiley

Giving his lecture for the third time freed Dr. Lionel Gift from paying much attention to it. He had a naturally expressive style of delivery, hones over the years in elementary-econ lecture halls. He knew, without even thinking, to address the middle rows of the hall, but to occasionally "shoot" the listeners in the back corners. He knew how to make eye contact and solicit the attention of those who were thinking of other things. — Jane Smiley

I'm not strange to myself, but I realize that I contrast with others fairly sharply. — Jane Smiley

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral. — Jane Smiley

There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off. — Jane Smiley

I always feel a little guilty when I break bad news to someone, because that energy, of knowing something others don't, sort of puffs you up. — Jane Smiley

With preference came point of view; with point of view, personality; with personality, uniqueness; with uniqueness, grief. — Jane Smiley

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later. — 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 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, which felt dirty as well as cold. Everywhere, I seemed to feel my skin from the inside, as if it now stood away from my flesh, separated by a millimeter of mortified space. — Jane Smiley

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials. — Jane Smiley

I gallop and jump and ride young horses with intense pleasure. — Jane Smiley

Redound to the university's professed goal of excellence — Jane Smiley

Walter didn't know what to make of his two boys. If you looked at it a certain way, then the one who needed the beatings to toughen him up, namely Joey, never did a thing to earn a beating, because he hadn't the gumption, and the one who got the beatings learned nothing from them. Looking back on his own childhood, Walter saw a much more orderly system: His father or mother told them the rules. If they got out of line, even not intending to, they got a whipping to help them remember the next time, and they did remember the next time, and so they got fewer beatings, and so they became boys who could get the work done, and since there was plenty of it, it had to get done. That was life, as far as Walter was concerned - you surveyed the landscape and took note of what was needed, and then you did it, and the completed tasks piled up behind you like a kind of treasure, or at least evidence of virtue. What life was for Frankie he could not imagine. — Jane Smiley

This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight. — Jane Smiley

It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about. — Jane Smiley

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice. — Jane Smiley

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects. — 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 mother that I was the least talented person behind the wheel that she had ever taught. — Jane Smiley

People are quite frequently eccentric. — Jane Smiley

He trusted only Devers, and why was that? Devers said, "We're going here," and they went there. Devers said, "Expect this and that," and this and that came to pass. But the rumor was that Ike didn't like Devers, and Frank figured this was the reason - Devers didn't have his head up his ass, and everyone else did. — Jane Smiley

said, looking for a job on Broadway. — Jane Smiley

There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time. — Jane Smiley

Northerners, even abolitionists, knew more about how and why to chop down the slavery tree than they ever knew what to do with its sour fruit. — Jane Smiley

Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting. — Jane Smiley

And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That's what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn't it? Commiserating about marriage. — Jane Smiley

I had a burden lift off me that I hadn't even felt the heaviness of until then, and it was the burden of having to wait and see what was going to happen. — 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 complexity, as if she had been bed-ridden in a small windowless room for years and was just now discovering the dramatic possibilities of daily life. She sang Alice through the day. — Jane Smiley

The best that can happen to a girl, Claire, is to be a bit plain, like you. You think I'm being unkind, but I am telling you a truth. A plain girl has a longer time to herself, and when a man falls in love with her, he loves her for herself, for who she is. — Jane Smiley

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states. — 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 at least a chance of a revival. — Jane Smiley

You know when we came out of the clinic, and we saw those flower beds that we hadn't seen when we were walking in? That was so unexpected, I think it made me delirious somehow. And then it seemed like if we just threw off all restraints and talked wildly and ate wildly and shopped wildly, it would just turn up the delirium, and make it even better, or permanent somehow ... — Jane Smiley

In December 1998, I considered myself an expert on love. I was almost a year into a relationship, one that had grown more slowly than I had wished, but once it flowered it was much more stimulating than any marriage or relationship I had known. — Jane Smiley

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school. — Jane Smiley

She knew she had become the strange sort of lady that she remembered noticing as a child, the sort of lady who was always neat and kind, whose house was quiet because there were no children, who hosted the knitting circle and kept small treats around in case some child might be in need of a licorice whip or a shortbread cookie. — Jane Smiley

I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic. — Jane Smiley

Contemplate the difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is its own reward, but an excuse leads to disappointment every time. — Jane Smiley

Hmm, What did I love? I think all the scents. Mama's lilac trees, and the wild iris in the fields, and rain on the breeze on a hot day. Apple and pear blossoms. The hay just cut. The mix of odors in the barn when the sunlight was shafting through the cracks in the boards, heating everything up. — Jane Smiley

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family — 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

Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living. — Jane Smiley

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

Her parents took her very seriously; she had trained them, with a combination of treats and punishments, to allow her to do as she pleased and express herself, and to pay attention to her opinions. Thanks — Jane Smiley

If there's anything Trollope novels always take seriously, it is money - how it flows from one character to another, how it is managed, who has it, who deserves it, and what it means to a character, male or female. — Jane Smiley

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity. — Jane Smiley

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive. — Jane Smiley

'Ape House' is an ambitious novel in several ways, for which it is to be admired, and it is certainly an easy read, but because Gruen is not quite prepared for the philosophical implications of her subject, it is not as deeply involving emotionally or as interesting thematically as it could be. — Jane Smiley

The state fair was all very well, but it shouldn't be the last thing you saw in your life. At first you thought of people like Eloise and Frank and Lillian as runaways, and then, after a bit, you knew they were really scouts. — Jane Smiley

Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival; his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion. — Jane Smiley

who was wearing a very handsome — Jane Smiley

Every spot on earth is particular, detailed, and incomprehensibly complex. — Jane Smiley

Linda was just born when I had my first miscarriage, and for a while, six months maybe, the sight of those two babies, whom I had loved and cared for with real interest and satisfaction, affected me like a poison. All my tissues hurt when I saw them, when I saw Rose with them, as if my capillaries were carrying acid into the furthest reaches of my system. I was so jealous, and so freshly jealous every time I saw them, that I could hardly speak, and I wasn't very nice to Rose, since some visceral part of me simply blamed her for having what I wanted, and for having it so easily — Jane Smiley

Novelists never have to footnote. — Jane Smiley

The real mystery was how your farm bound you to it, so tightly that you would pay any price (literally, in interest) or make any sacrifice just to take these steps across this familiar undulating ground time and time again. — Jane Smiley

dark, wet sides of the well dropped maybe — Jane Smiley

Had I faced all the facts It seemed like I had but actually you never know just by remembering how many there were to have faced. — Jane Smiley

Surprised. Then everyone, by unspoken — Jane Smiley

After a long day, folk rest at night. After a long summer, folk play games and sit about in the winter. After a long life folk sit about the fire and stay warm, for the chill of death is upon them, and even the thickest bearskin can't keep off the shivering. — Jane Smiley