Jane Smiley Quotes

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Jane Smiley

Profession : Writer

Birth : September 26, 1949

In my experience, there is only one motivation, and that is desire. No reasons or principle contain it or stand against it.

Jane Smiley

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

Jane Smiley

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.

Jane Smiley

I think that the Cold War was an exceptional and unnecessary piece of cruelty.

Jane Smiley

There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where many horses are gathered together, where year after year, decade after decade, they do the same, rather simple thing - run in races and try to win.

Jane Smiley

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.

Jane Smiley

Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.

Jane Smiley

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

Jane Smiley

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.

Jane Smiley

With horses, familiarity breeds comfort. If you haven't been around horses for a while (or ever), the best thing to do is to go to the racetrack, a horse show, a rodeo, or some other horsey activity, and watch the horses. Familiarize yourself with the way they move and behave themselves.

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.

Jane Smiley

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

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.

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.

Jane Smiley

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

Jane Smiley

Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.

Jane Smiley

One of the profound effects of economics in our day is that the people with the money and the power have embraced the guilt-free, external-less, everything-will-turn-out-okay-in-the-end philosophy of economics in order to justify their own evil works. And the economists, for the most part, have sucked up to that money.

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.

Jane Smiley

Oh, that sound? I'm in the hot tub, reading a novel.

Jane Smiley

Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.

Jane Smiley