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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.

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
Anything
Horses
Much
Racing
Really
Wake
Way
Terror
Never
Horse
Would
Novel
Literature
Racetrack
Working
Intimidating

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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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A novelist is on the cusp between someone who knows everything and someone who knows nothing.
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The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer it's possessed by the reader.
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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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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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The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
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I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
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I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.
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I was an only child. I've known only children. From this experience, I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.
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Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family
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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.
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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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Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.
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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.
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I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic.
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There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off.
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Charles Dickens was an avid seeker of names - he read directories and looked for odd names on gravestones.
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Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.
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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.
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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.
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