Quote

Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.

Jane Smiley

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jane Smiley
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Charles
Seekers
Odd
Gravestones
Looked
Gravestone
Poetry
Avid
Names
Seeker
Literature
Read
Dickens

More quotes by Jane Smiley

Image
I was an only child. I've known only children. From this experience, I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.
Jane Smiley
Image
People with good intentions never give up!
Jane Smiley
Image
There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off.
Jane Smiley
Image
Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
Jane Smiley
Image
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
Image
Sometimes, a novel is like a train: the first chapter is a comfortable seat in an attractive carriage, and the narrative speeds up. But there are other sorts of trains, and other sorts of novels. They rush by in the dark passengers framed in the lighted windows are smiling and enjoying themselves.
Jane Smiley
Image
A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
Jane Smiley
Image
Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.
Jane Smiley
Image
you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.
Jane Smiley
Image
I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
Jane Smiley
Image
Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.
Jane Smiley
Image
Novelists never have to footnote.
Jane Smiley
Image
In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley
Image
Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable.
Jane Smiley
Image
Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
Jane Smiley
Image
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley