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Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.

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
Lies
Lying
Good
Delusions
Intentions
Delusion
Wicked
Intention
Lead

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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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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Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.
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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.
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Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.
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People are quite frequently eccentric.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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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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The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
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you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.
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My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.
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Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
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Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field.
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Respect and fear are two different things.
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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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.
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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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In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
Jane Smiley