Jane Smiley Quotes
Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn't stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.
Quotes to Explore
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As with the onset of sudden celebrity, for the newly rich, the world often becomes a darker, narrower, less generous place; a paradox that elicits scant sympathy, but is nonetheless true.
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We are seeing at the Republican National Committee a phenomenon that is worth noting this week; maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe Wednesday, we will have a million first time donors since the president took office.
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I talk every day about doing the right thing.
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I feel like my story would've been different had I had a chance to play with Bron when I was 18. I've thought about it countless times.
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I have a massive divide between being a competent human being and being completely hopeless, when it comes to logic.
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Bogart could have been color blind. He got to know a man before he decided if he liked him or not.
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The first decent building I did with my own practice was a chapel in Taiwan.
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As a mom, you do what you have to do without even thinking about it.
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When you argue with your inferiors, you convince them of only one thing: they are as clever as you.
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The Islamic tradition does show some areas of apparent incompatibility with the goals of women in the West, and Muslims have a long way to go in their attitudes towards women. But blaming the religion is again to express an ignorance both of the religion and of the historical struggle for equality of women in Muslim societies.
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I was the highest-paid street performer, probably, in the history of Chicago. I was making like $800 a day.
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Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race. Do not spare the men. Do not spare the women. Preserve only the factories, railroads, machines, mines, and raw materials. Destroy everything else. Then return to work. Work must not cease.
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Declare Church and State forever separate and distinct, but each free within their proper spheres, and that all church property shall bear its own proportion of taxation.
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People pretend to be nice; people pretend to be smooth and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance because the way we're built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions.
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The funniest people I know were, not necessarily troubled, but had a harder time in school or were shy or picked on or something like that. I think that you rely on it. 'Well, I don't think I'm cute and no one wants to hang out with me - I'd better start trying to make people laugh.' I think there's an element of that in there.
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I have never gotten a B in my life. I would honestly be mortified if I got a B. I'm so academically driven.
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We almost need a revolution in the culture of our thinking about football.
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This job certainly doesn't win you a huge amount of friends, I accept that, but it is very enjoyable, and deep down I think it's probably quite a worthwhile job.
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I can play in front of 30,000 people at Fenway and not be nervous at all. But I get really nervous in front of kids.
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After writing each novel, I would spend days poring over suggestions from my editor.
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I'd rather lose an argument than get into a long discussion in order to win it.
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People who work in factories or in the woods or maybe a dairy farm - for years, I've been fascinated with people like that. No pretensions. They just live their lives. I found them beautiful. They were all I seemed to be interested in writing about.
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Most of my childhood revolved around wondering when we would be blown up by the Russians. I couldn't stand the news, I knew that if the missile were launched, mortality would arrive in half an hour, so I spent a lot of my childhood feeling that I was 30 minutes from being dead.
