Jane Smiley Quotes
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In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.
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If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials.
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My mom was paranoid about my safety.
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Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.
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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.
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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.
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In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.
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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.
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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.
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As Fallingwater demonstrates, Wright's genius was always specific, but also always lively, always daring.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.
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I gallop and jump and ride young horses with intense pleasure.
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Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.
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Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them.
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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.
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Respect and fear are two different things.
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Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.
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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.
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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.
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The thing about Republicans is that they don't care so much about respect, but they love fear, at least in others.