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My mom was paranoid about my safety.
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
Mom
Paranoid
Safety
More quotes by Jane Smiley
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
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
Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
Jane Smiley
Respect and fear are two different things.
Jane Smiley
I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
Jane Smiley
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
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
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
In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
Jane Smiley
The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.
Jane Smiley
People are quite frequently eccentric.
Jane Smiley
Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.
Jane Smiley
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
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
Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
Jane Smiley
A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
Jane Smiley
it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.
Jane Smiley
Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.
Jane Smiley
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.
Jane Smiley
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