Jane Smiley Quotes

Every spot on earth is particular, detailed, and incomprehensibly complex.

People with good intentions never give up!

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

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

Almonds. Apricots. Avocadoes. Some peaches I don't know. Grapefruit. Lemones. Probably oranges.

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.

Had I faced all the facts It seemed like I had but actually you never know just by remembering how many there were to have faced.

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

My mind is like a room where the door swings free in the breeze, and many visitors come and go and stay and vanish as they will.

Evil people must spread their evil everywhere.

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.

Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows.

But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before.

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.

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