Jane Smiley Quotes

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

Jane Smiley

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Quotes to Explore

• In my town, and especially in my area, there were people from everywhere: Algerians, Senegalese, French people, Asians, all kinds of immigrants and natives, and everyone circulated.

  

  Tahar Rahim
  • People
  • Everyone
  • Immigrants

• The real debate is, when does life begin? When life begins, it deserves protection.

  

  Rand Paul
  • Life
  • Real
  • Debate

• I wasn't very good as a puppet. A lot of times in a movie, you need a really good puppeteer: you're sort of a puppet, and you're doing what you can. But I always, from the beginning, was kind of making up my own stuff from stand-up and sort of directing myself, so I wasn't very good in movies where I didn't have control.

  

  Dana Carvey
  • Up
  • Good
  • Movie

• My goal in politics from the very beginning has been, and will be, the goal of giving Ukraine a chance to finally secure a firm footing in the world as a competitive, independent and real European state.

  

  Yulia Tymoshenko
  • World
  • Real
  • Giving

• I'm not a business girl. I will never be a business girl, but I will say, for Anna Wintour, that I respect successful people; I like things that are success.

  

  Carine Roitfeld
  • People
  • Business
  • Success

• I never thought about having a daughter, and then I had a daughter, and it was a remarkable thing. It was very different from having a son and your response to it. With a son, it's much more complex. And it's probably because of my stuff in the past. With a daughter, I was surprised at how simple it is.

  

  Sam Shepard
  • Different
  • Past
  • Simple

• It's hard for people to realize now, but my gosh, when I was in school, you could not name a group that was less cool than Kiss. Going in to school with a Kiss T-shirt, you were asking for ridicule. In '77, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, but by '80, there was a severe backlash.

  

  Eddie Trunk
  • People
  • World
  • School

• When I was young, we were taught not to dunk. We were taught not to stand out from the rest of the team. It's different now.

  

  Yao Ming
  • Different
  • Team
  • Rest

• When faced with the inevitable fatigue that comes with the recycling of speeches and the recycling of thoughts in a rather small stream of vortex, I am urged to not be ashamed of recycling.

  

  Barbara Amiel
  • Speeches
  • Fatigue
  • Recycling

• A lot of people, especially Christians, want to put you in this box of being a Christian actor, and I don't believe in it. You do yourself and everyone else a big disservice when you start thinking about it as 'Christian art.' That's why most Christian art is bad. They don't put a premium on the 'art.'

  

  Zachary Levi
  • People
  • Believe
  • Thinking

• Singing is a way of escaping. It's another world. I'm no longer on earth.

  

  Edith Piaf
  • World
  • Earth
  • Singing

• Seeing how easy it has been to use Twitter for good has exposed the double-edged sword of how easy it could be to co-opt.

  

  Rachel Sklar
  • Good
  • Easy
  • Seeing

• I want to be remembered as the football player I was. The private person is nobody's business.

  

  Zlatan Ibrahimovic
  • Business
  • Want
  • Football

• Scientists care deeply about their place in that culture, and their contribution to it.

  

  Haldan Keffer Hartline
  • Culture
  • Care
  • Contribution

• It's an exciting life. I don't know where God is leading us. I just know that He opens doors and He closes the doors, and it is always the best for us.

  

  Barbara Mandrell
  • Life
  • God
  • Best

• Young girls in particular aren't given a space to be messy and complicated and express themselves and experiment - they're told to be a little quieter and a little less than.

  

  Rachel Keller
  • Space
  • Young
  • Messy

• You get these moments of thrill. There you are, at 3:00 in the morning, and you know something about how we evolved that nobody else in the world knows. It's a thrill of discovery. You make this breakthrough, and you find something. It's this wonderful, wonderful scavenger hunt when you got to the end. It's just so great to be a scientist.

  

  Pardis Sabeti
  • World
  • Great
  • Morning

• I sat down and collected all of our eleven sales for the past six months and I added them all together and divided by eleven. I then took that average and presented it as the average price for a Manhattan apartment. The media ate it up.

  

  Barbara Corcoran
  • Up
  • Together
  • Past

• A really good impressionist, even if they don't look at all like the person they're impersonating, it's a weird thing where they start to look like that person. It's kind of odd.

  

  Ato Essandoh
  • Good
  • Weird

• This is an election year, and I think we're in desperate trouble and it's time for people to speak up and not pipe down. It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know.

  

  Linda Ronstadt
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• What we know is not capable of being otherwise; of things capable of being otherwise we do not know, when they have passed outsideour observation, whether they exist or not. Therefore the object of knowledge is of necessity. Therefore it is eternal; for things that are of necessity in the unqualified sense are all eternal; and things that are eternal are ungenerated and imperishable.

  

  Aristotle
  • Know
  • Things
  • Sense

• We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men.

  

  George Ripley
  • Men
  • Literature

• I never heard nobody in my audience call me any kind of names.

  

  Little Richard
  • Never
  • Audience
  • Names

• Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

  

  Jane Smiley