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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
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Jane Smiley
Age: 75
Born: 1949
Born: January 1
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
LA
California
Jane Graves Smiley
Exercise
Taste
Told
Freedom
Individual
Doesn
Art
Exists
Exist
More quotes by Jane Smiley
I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.
Jane Smiley
The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer it's possessed by the reader.
Jane Smiley
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.
Jane Smiley
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
My mom was paranoid about my safety.
Jane Smiley
The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.
Jane Smiley
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.
Jane Smiley
If to live is to progress, if you are lucky, from foolishness to wisdom, then to write novels is to broadcast the various stages of your foolishness.
Jane Smiley
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.
Jane Smiley
I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.
Jane Smiley
Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
Jane Smiley
Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
Jane Smiley
A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together.
Jane Smiley
I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
Jane Smiley
Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific.
Jane Smiley
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.
Jane Smiley
Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.
Jane Smiley
But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses
Jane Smiley
I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
Jane Smiley
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
