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 library peculiar
A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site — stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct.
book pages firsts
When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more intensely.
fashion art book
Sinclair Lewis may be ripe for a revival; his books raise several interesting issues of art and fashion.
book writing breathing
I wrote the Dickens book because I loved Dickens, not because I felt a kinship with him, but after writing the book it seemed to me that there was at least one similarity between us and that was that Dickens loved to write and wrote with the ease and conviction of breathing. Me, too.
book writing editors
I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.
book reading school
There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school.
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.
inspirational inspiring book
Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
book chocolate cooked dinner eating family fun incredibly laid novels
Writing this book was incredibly fun because I soaked in the bathtub, laid around eating chocolate in bed, cooked dinner for my family and read novels the whole time.
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.
clean entirely imagine iraqis junk leave next opposed practical since
I've been entirely opposed to it since Day one. The next practical thing to do is to get out, and since I don't imagine we're going to clean up after us, the Iraqis are going to have to clean up all the junk we leave behind.
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.
beginning boy desperate life merely painful portrait tone
'Lean on Pete' is the story of a boy and his horse, but it is never heart-warming - it ranges in tone from desperate to merely painful - and, while fascinating, it is never entertaining or redemptive. But if you want an unadorned portrait of American life (at least in some places) at the beginning of the 21st century, this is the book for you.
almost good maybe odd perfect readers repeated surprise unique
'The Good Soldier' is an odd and maybe even unique book. That it is a masterpiece, almost a perfect novel, comes as a repeated surprise even to readers who have read it before.