Author

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

Gossip. The more you talk about why people do things, the more ideas you have about how the world works.

'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.

From Jane Smiley

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.

From Jane Smiley

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

From Jane Smiley

It once amused me that it took me three tries to pass my driver's test and that my driving instructor told my mother that I was the least talented person behind the wheel that she had ever taught.

From Jane Smiley

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials.

From Jane Smiley

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

From Jane Smiley

An urban novelist never minds a little decay.

From Jane Smiley

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.

From Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley

Notable Quotes

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