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Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
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
Incompetent
Competent
Groups
Family
Men
Mimic
Playground
Playgrounds
More quotes by Jane Smiley
The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
Jane Smiley
A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.
Jane Smiley
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
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
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
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
Jane Smiley
Respect and fear are two different things.
Jane Smiley
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
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
Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
Jane Smiley
Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.
Jane Smiley
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
Novelists never have to footnote.
Jane Smiley
Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting.
Jane Smiley
Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.
Jane Smiley
you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.
Jane Smiley
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
I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
Jane Smiley
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
English majors understand human nature better than economists do.
Jane Smiley