Quote

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

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Jane Smiley
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Love
Stronger
People
Gives
Memories
Talk
Write
Eavesdrop
Sense
Concerns
Giving
Memory
Writing
Concern

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
Jane Smiley
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Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.
Jane Smiley
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English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
Jane Smiley
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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
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Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
Jane Smiley
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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
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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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The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer it's possessed by the reader.
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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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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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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you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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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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Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.
Jane Smiley
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Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...
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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Respect and fear are two different things.
Jane Smiley
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
Jane Smiley