Jane Smiley Quotes
-
A child who is protected from all controversial ideas is as vulnerable as a child who is protected from every germ. The infection, when it comes- and it will come- may overwhelm the system, be it the immune system or the belief system.
-
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!
-
I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.
-
I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.
-
Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
-
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.
-
In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.
-
Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
-
I have reared, or helped to rear, five children and the scariest bit, bar none, is the learning-to-drive part. It has filled me with anxiety not only about the children, but also about my former self and my friends.
-
In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.
-
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.
-
In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
-
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.
-
I gallop and jump and ride young horses with intense pleasure.
-
There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.
-
With any novel that you begin, you can't foresee how difficult or easy it's going to be, and you can't really prepare yourself. You just have a take it one step at a time and know that it's all right to keep going - you can always fix it.
-
My mom was paranoid about my safety.
-
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.
-
I learned why 'out riding alone' is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious but also understandable living being that is the horse.
-
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.
-
It once amused me that it took me three tries to pass my driver's test and that my driving instructor told my mother that I was the least talented person behind the wheel that she had ever taught.
-
Respect and fear are two different things.
-
We sort of read two or three big newspapers but we don't get the flavor of the local events, the local news as much.
-
Somehow, knowing that Alzheimer's is coming mocks all one's aspirations - to tell stories, to think through certain issues as only a novel can do, to be recognised for one's accomplishments and hard work - in a way that old familiar death does not.