Jane Smiley Quotes (18 Quotes)

accepted his idea that the audience for a quality novel might not be large enough to support the author by means of commerce this idea is a truism today, but it was new, even revolutionary, for Virginia Woolf, James Joyce and many of their contemporaries.

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.

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.

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

My characters never die screaming in rage. They attempt to pull themselves back together and go on. And that's basically a conservative view of life.

Most interestingly of all, she attempts to show that the novel as a form has a certain political coloring, because it has to have a certain organization. ... that's a statement that says, 'conformity is not the highest good.'

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.

In a society that promotes conformity, ... novel-reading one person experiencing both the mind of another person and her own mind experiencing is a subversive force.

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.

It's a gimmick. It's more fun. Usually, you're just standing there, trying to look compelling in some way and not succeeding. It can look like a mug shot. The author can look, not exactly like a deer in the headlights, but a little bit like another night creature scuttling from burrow to burrow.

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

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

I have noticed before that there is a category of acquaintanceship that is not friendship or business or romance, but speculation, fascination.

I suggest that it be used like a trunk full of fabric samples or a box of costume jewelry - it is not to be read through from beginning to end in search of a cohesive argument, but to be rummaged about in, in search of something interesting or striking.

he aspired to produce something simultaneously less vulgar and less formless than the novels of the great Victorians, and ... he wished his work to elevate the novel to the status of art.

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

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 911.

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.