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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
Recognize
Ignorance
State
Doesn
States
Self
Mind
Generating
Characteristics

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it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.
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Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
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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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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.
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Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
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Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...
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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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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.
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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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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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Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.
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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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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.
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
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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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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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The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.
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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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I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.
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