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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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Jane Smiley
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Surface
Irrelevance
Conservative
Relevance
Novel
Purely
Hold
Bent
Fashion
Aesthetic
Better
Novelists
Novels
According

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A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together.
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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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Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
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I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.
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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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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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I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
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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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A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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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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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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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.
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I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
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Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
Jane Smiley
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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Hungry ears are sharp ones.
Jane Smiley
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English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
Jane Smiley
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I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
Jane Smiley