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Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'

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
Still
Falling
Children
Unhappy
Writing
Apart
Even
Marriage
Says
Fall
Stills
Part
Fascinating

More quotes by 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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Well, in fact everybody - everybody - in the entire nation has enough stuff in their life to write about that's interesting that they could write their autobiography. And in the end that's why I find people interesting.
Jane Smiley
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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.
Jane Smiley
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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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Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.
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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Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.
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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We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.
Jane Smiley
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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.
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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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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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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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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A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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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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.
Jane Smiley
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I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
Jane Smiley