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
Literature
Seeker
Read
Dickens
Charles
Seekers
Odd
Looked
Gravestones
Poetry
Gravestone
Names
Avid

More quotes by Jane Smiley

Image
everything is toxic. That's the point. You can't avoid toxins. Thinking you can is just another symptom of the toxic overload stage.
Jane Smiley
Image
it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.
Jane Smiley
Image
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!
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
Many said that now there was no hope of salvation, for a man might do anything and be in the wrong. There was no way to tell. It was better to stay on the steading and mind the cows and be content with such days as are left to one and cease to wonder about life everlasting.
Jane Smiley
Image
Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.
Jane Smiley
Image
Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley
Image
Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
Jane Smiley
Image
Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
Jane Smiley
Image
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
Image
Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance.
Jane Smiley
Image
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.
Jane Smiley
Image
Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.
Jane Smiley
Image
A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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
Respect and fear are two different things.
Jane Smiley
Image
I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
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
My mom was paranoid about my safety.
Jane Smiley