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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
Also
Current
Even
Currents
Thing
Remain
Places
Enlightening
Novel
Comforting
Learned
Apparently
Times
Distant
Another
Novels

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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.
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I was an only child. I've known only children. From this experience, I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.
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a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.
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I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.
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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
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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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Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting.
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Novelists never have to footnote.
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A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
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In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
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My mom was paranoid about my safety.
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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.
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If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
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I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.
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The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer it's possessed by the reader.
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Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now, not even my mom.
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There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off.
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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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