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

Jane Smiley

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Jane Smiley
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Places
Enlightening
Novel
Comforting
Learned
Apparently
Times
Distant
Another
Novels
Also
Current
Even
Currents
Thing
Remain

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.
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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.
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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!'
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I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
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I learned why 'out riding alone' is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious but also understandable living being that is the horse.
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But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses
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Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
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People with good intentions never give up!
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Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.
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Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.
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The brave view is that talking it out helps work it out. Maybe the realistic view is that talking it out inflames the issues further. But that is America, especially these days.
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I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
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Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.
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In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
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There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.
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Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
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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.
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Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field.
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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.
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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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