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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.

Jane Smiley

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Jane Smiley
Age: 76
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Write
Icons
Around
Reminders
Writing
Floats
Work
Meaningless
Like
Images
Serve
Novel
Head
Float

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
Jane Smiley
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My mom was paranoid about my safety.
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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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
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The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
Jane Smiley
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it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.
Jane Smiley
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I have reared, or helped to rear, five children and the scariest bit, bar none, is the learning to drive part. It has filled me with anxiety not only about the children, but also about my former self and my friends.
Jane Smiley
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The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.
Jane Smiley
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In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.
Jane Smiley
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Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.
Jane Smiley
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People are quite frequently eccentric.
Jane Smiley
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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
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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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.
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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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.
Jane Smiley