Jane Smiley Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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This life and this job and this position that I'm put in, it forces you to grow up quick. I definitely got dropped in the deep end.
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The fact that we live in a world where black people have to strategize so they're not brutalized by police is insane.
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The art of storytelling is reaching its end because the epic side of truth, wisdom, is dying out.
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Researchers looked at news programs on major broadcast and cable networks between 2008 and 2012 and found that of those labeled as domestic terrorists, 81% were identifiable as Muslims - this despite the fact that FBI reports from the period studied revealed that only 6% of domestic terrorist suspects were Muslim.
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I love the Wendy Syred boutique in Taunton. She has fantastic off-the-wall stuff, such as Vivienne Westwood. And I always have huge success in Omah Shoes, which is also in Taunton. I've got such small feet - three and a half - but I always find my size there.
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Anytime that I've felt uninspired, I don't force myself to sit down and write. I only do it when I feel the impulse.
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It's very likely that I will finish my career as Swiss national coach.
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Whichever party is in office, the Treasury is in power.
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Afghanistan has moved forward and Afghanistan will defend itself. And the progress that we have achieved, the Afghan people will not allow it to be put back or reversed.
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I just wanted laughs - that's really what I was after.
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Theatre sports is the best improv training period.
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Most fathers don't see the war within the daughter, her struggles with conflicting images of the idealized and flawed father, her temptation both to retreat to Daddy's lap and protection and to push out of his embrace to that of beau and the world beyond home.
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If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.
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All the old great companies were run by guys who knew what an animator meant, and guys who knew how to draw. All the companies today are run by executives.
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I constantly work at maintaining balance. For me, my family comes first. If my family is taken care of, then everything else usually falls into place.
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If you actively do something, it will stop making you feel like a victim and you'll start feeling like part of the solution, which is just a huge benefit to your body and your psyche.
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Is fear preventing you from taking action? Acknowledge the fear, watch it, take your attention into it, be fully present with it. Doing so cuts the link between the fear and your thinking. Don't let the fear rise up into your mind. Use the power of the Now. Fear cannot prevail against it.
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A number of people in the United States, almost everyone, is using plastic cards to pay for things, but it's extremely difficult to accept these cards. So let's make it's easy and take more and more of the friction out as we can.
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I keep on 5 to 10 pounds above my jeans weight, as the ultimate no-filler-needed refresher, and buy a size up on jeans.
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Both the Oblation Board and the Specters of Indifference are bewitched by this truth about human beings: that innocence is different from experience. The Oblation Board fears and hates Dust, and the Specters feast on it, but it's Dust both of them are obsessed by.
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I was fairly solitary. I didn't like structured learning. People didn't seem to be my cup of tea.
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Often by the time writers and producers try to get a new hit song, the industry has already moved on. Whatever you're creating might not be as hot as it would have been during the time of your first hit. It definitely compromises the creative process when the music is changing and evolving so fast. If you're not on top of it, you will be forgotten.
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It is essential that anyone reading this book know at the outset that the author is apolitical. I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics.
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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.
