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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.

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
Never
Riding
Mysterious
Horse
Learned
Alone
Equestrian
Living
Sensing
Also
Oxymoron
Always
Understandable

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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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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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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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.
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Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
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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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A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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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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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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People are quite frequently eccentric.
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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.
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
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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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I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
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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.
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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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Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.
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I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.
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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.
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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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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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