Jane Smiley Quotes

A theory of creativity is actually just a metaphor. A pool of ideas, a well of memories, a voice.

Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival; his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

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.

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.

People are quite frequently eccentric.

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.

Novelists never have to footnote.

Before I write a novel, images float around in my head that work like icons - they are meaningless in themselves, but serve as reminders.

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!'

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Write every day, just to keep in the habit, and remember that whatever you have written is neither as good nor as bad as you think it is. Just keep going, and tell yourself that you will fix it later.

One of the things that Ivar knew about Mrs. Walker was that she would only tell him what she knew if he asked the right question, so he spent a portion of his time meditating over what he might ask Mrs. Walker and how he might phrase the question.

When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.

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.

I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.

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.

Not every novel that wants to be a tragedy gets to be one.

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.

How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors.

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.

Art doesn't exist if you just do what you're told. It only exists as an exercise of individual taste and freedom.

There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

In December 1998, I considered myself an expert on love. I was almost a year into a relationship, one that had grown more slowly than I had wished, but once it flowered it was much more stimulating than any marriage or relationship I had known.

With preference came point of view; with point of view, personality; with personality, uniqueness; with uniqueness, grief.

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.

Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions.

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

it still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco.

People with good intentions never give up!

I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.

The essence of charity ... was not deciding what others needed and giving it to them, but giving them what they wanted.

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.

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

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.