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Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.

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
Mind
Generating
Characteristics
Recognize
Ignorance
State
Doesn
States
Self

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.
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I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
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The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.
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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 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.
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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.
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I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
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In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.
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Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death.
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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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If there's anything Trollope novels always take seriously, it is money - how it flows from one character to another, how it is managed, who has it, who deserves it, and what it means to a character, male or female.
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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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Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.
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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There can never be such a thing as a free market, because it is human nature to cheat, monopolize, and buy off others so as to corner the market.
Jane Smiley
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Hungry ears are sharp ones.
Jane Smiley
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Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.
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