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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

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I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?
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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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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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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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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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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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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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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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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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In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
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Novelists never have to footnote.
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Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.
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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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The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
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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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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!
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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.
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Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...
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Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them.
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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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