Jane Smiley Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses

  Jane Smiley

  Girl, Horse, Children

  Jane Smiley (2014). “A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money and Luck”, p.38, Faber & Faber

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• Novelists never have to footnote.

  Jane Smiley

  Novelists, Footnotes

  Jane Smiley (2011). “Moo”, p.324, Anchor

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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.

  Jane Smiley

  Human Nature, Cheat, Free Market

  "Other Economists in the Room" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. October 19, 2009.

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• Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past.

  Jane Smiley

  Past, Ignorant, Sin

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• People are quite frequently eccentric.

  Jane Smiley

  People, Eccentric

  "Divorce! It’s Good for the Children!" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2010.

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• Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.

  Jane Smiley

  Ignorance, Long, United States

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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.

  Jane Smiley

  Dark, Narrative, Firsts

  "The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt - review" by Jane Smiley, www.theguardian.com. July 15, 2011.

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• 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

  Mother, Horse, Fascination

  FaceBook post by Jane Smiley from Jun 30, 2010

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• I say, when your hair turns gray and your children think they know who you are, do the thing that shakes up who you think you are, even who you had prided yourself on being. When all those around you say they simply don't recognize you any longer, that's the real compliment.

  Jane Smiley

  Children, Real, Thinking

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• A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site — stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct.

  Jane Smiley

  Book, Library, Peculiar

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• There are five things that societies do: They reproduce; they produce food; they organize themselves in terms of law; they organize themselves in terms of belief; and they make art. Four of them are about conformity, and in these, everything would go more smoothly if people just would shut up and do what they're told. But in art it doesn't work that way.

  Jane Smiley

  Art, Law, People

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. December 4, 2007.

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• Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

  Jane Smiley

  Writing, Novel, Activity

  Jane Smiley (2008). “13 Ways of Looking at the Novel”, p.224, Anchor

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• Some people do wait their whole lives for something, and it's only when that thing arrives that they find out that they've been waiting rather than living.

  Jane Smiley

  People, Waiting, Aging

  Jane Smiley (2017). “Moo”, p.274, Pan Macmillan

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• Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

  Jane Smiley

  Ice Cream, Fuel, Candy

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• You cannot be an egomaniac on the horse. If you lose your temper and start beating him, either you will destroy him, or he will destroy you. As soon as you start riding horses seriously, you're being disciplined on a daily basis about how ignorant you are and what there is left for you to learn.

  Jane Smiley

  Horse, Ignorant, Riding

  Interview with Matthew Rothschild, www.sharedhost.progressive.org. December 4, 2007.

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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

  Horse, Racing, Wake Up

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• a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.

  Jane Smiley

  Book, Avid, Order

  FaceBook post by Jane Smiley from Feb 23, 2012

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• The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

  Jane Smiley

  Childhood, Fundamentals, Conditions

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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.

  Jane Smiley

  Writing, People, Interesting

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• you know that the urge for revenge is a fact of marital life.

  Jane Smiley

  Revenge, Facts, Knows

  Jane Smiley (2011). “Ordinary Love and Good Will”, p.195, Anchor

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• When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong?

  Jane Smiley

  Friendship, Summer, Mother

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• 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

  Mom, Uncles, Aunt

  "A Few Remedies for the Right to Bear Arms" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 18, 2012.

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• The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

  Jane Smiley

  Brother, Sibling, Sister In Law

  "Divorce! It’s Good for the Children!" by Jane Smiley, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 12, 2010.

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• 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

  Doctors, Vets, Injury

  "With the benefit of foresight..." by Jane Smiley, www.theguardian.com. May 18, 2002.

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• Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.

  Jane Smiley

  Crowds, Novel

  "On hallowed turf" by Jane Smiley, www.theguardian.com. April 18, 2008.

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