The collection / 34 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1949 AD

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

Jane Smiley / quote

02c. 1949 AD

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.

Jane Smiley / quote

03c. 1949 AD

People with good intentions never give up!

Jane Smiley / quote

04c. 1949 AD

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.

Jane Smiley / quote

05c. 1949 AD

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

Jane Smiley / quote

06c. 1949 AD

The only siblings I have are half-siblings. My nuclear family would have been an extra-suffocating threesome. Instead, I have an interesting brother and sister, in-laws, and darling nephews.

Jane Smiley / quote

07c. 1949 AD

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.

Jane Smiley / quote

08c. 1949 AD

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.

Jane Smiley / quote

09c. 1949 AD

I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

Jane Smiley / quote

10c. 1949 AD

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.

Jane Smiley / quote