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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
Wicked
Intention
Lead
Lies
Lying
Good
Delusions
Intentions
Delusion

More quotes by Jane Smiley

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I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
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But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses
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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 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.
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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.
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If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.
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People are quite frequently eccentric.
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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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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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Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.
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Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.
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In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
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I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
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I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
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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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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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Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
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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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The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.
Jane Smiley