Jane Smiley quotes - page 3

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader. (Jane Smiley)
My great fear is not that I'll run out of ideas. It's that I'll run out of time. View quote
Jane Smiley
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!' View quote
Jane Smiley
I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures. View quote
Jane Smiley
In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects. View quote
Jane Smiley
The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel. View quote
Jane Smiley
Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family. View quote
Jane Smiley
Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom. View quote
Jane Smiley
Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific. View quote
Jane Smiley
Novelists never have to footnote. View quote
Jane Smiley
There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time. (Jane Smiley)
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! View quote
Jane Smiley
All equestrians, if they last long enough, learn that riding in whatever form is a lifelong sport and art, an endeavor that is both familiar and new every time you take the horse out of his stall or pasture. View quote
Jane Smiley
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. View quote
Jane Smiley
I readily admit it is easy to make of horses what we will. Silent, in some ways reserved, they allow us to train them, and to project our ideas upon them; to ride and drive them, and to make them symbolic, perhaps to a greater degree than any other species. View quote
Jane Smiley
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. View quote
Jane Smiley
When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud - 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong? View quote
Jane Smiley
If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand. View quote
Jane Smiley
When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty. View quote
Jane Smiley
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. View quote
Jane Smiley
Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out. (Jane Smiley)
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. View quote
Jane Smiley
In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high. View quote
Jane Smiley
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. View quote
Jane Smiley
An urban novelist never minds a little decay. View quote
Jane Smiley