Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley
Jane Smileyis an American novelist. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1992 for her novel A Thousand Acres...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth26 September 1949
CityLos Angeles, CA
CountryUnited States of America
inspirational inspiring book
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
ideas naps together
Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.
perfect firsts
Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.
novel reader possessed
The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.
waiting
I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
children ideas may
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.
book order voice
a bookstore is one of the few places where all the cantankerous, conflicting, alluring voices of the world co-exist in peace and order and the avid reader is as free as a person can possibly be, because she is free to choose among them.
horse racing literature
Horse racing is really much more intimidating than anything having to do with literature. When I had horses at the racetrack, I would wake up in terror in a way that I would never wake up while working on a novel.
running spiritual fall
The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.
closing-up issues looks
I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.
children fall writing
Even if my marriage is falling apart and my children are unhappy, there is still a part of me that says, 'God, this is fascinating!'
horse ignorant egomaniacs
You cannot be an egomaniac on the horse. If you lose your temper and start beating him, either you will destroy him, or he will destroy you. As soon as you start riding horses seriously, you're being disciplined on a daily basis about how ignorant you are and what there is left for you to learn.
girl horse husband
But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses
men groups playgrounds
Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family