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
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.
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.
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.
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.
ideas naps together
Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.
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.
ignorance long red
Ignorance and bloodlust have a long tradition in the United States, especially in the red states.
perfect firsts
Every first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.
inspirational inspiring book
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
consciousness effect faith good inspired national novelist ok reading room several terrorism thoughts ways wonderful worked
My reading had a wonderful effect and it worked in several ways on different levels. It inspired in me the idea that it was OK to go on as a novelist in good faith and that there could be room in my consciousness and the national consciousness about thoughts other than terrorism and 9/11.
dual eternal life poems taught
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.
bigger expensive looking movies people screens
Just look at movies. As movies are getting bigger and bigger and more expensive to produce, the screens that people are looking at them are getting smaller.
book experience hundred novel page perhaps possible reader thousand turn
When a novel has two hundred thousand words, then it is possible for the reader to experience two hundred thousand delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.