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Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley Quotes

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Famous Jane Smiley Quotes

“Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having sent signs of the hunger beforehand, that He was just, having sent the hunger in the first place, or having sent the whales and the teeming reindeer in the end. Some folk learned that He was to be found in the world-in the richness of the grass and the pearly beauty of the Heavens, and others learned that He could not be found in the world, for the world is always wanting, and God is completion.”

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Book:The Greenlanders
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“Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he’s having right now. That’s how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction. We have to stand up to that, and say, at least to ourselves, that what he’s done before is still with us, still right here in this room until there’s true remorse. Nothing will be right until there’s that.” “He looks so, sort of, weakened.” “Weakened is not enough. Destroyed isn’t enough. He’s got to repent and feel humiliation and regret. I won’t be satisfied until he knows what he is.” "Do we know what we are?" "We know we aren’t him. We know that to that degree we don’t yet deserve the lowest circle of hell.”

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Book:A Thousand Acres
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“I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have arrived at the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don’t think it is years themselves, or the disintegration of the body. Most of our bodies are better taken care of and better-looking than ever. What it is, is what we know, now that in spite of ourselves we have stopped to think about it. It is not only that we know that love ends, children are stolen, parents die feeling that their lives have been meaningless. It is not only that, by this time, a lot of acquaintances and friends have died and all the others are getting ready to sooner or later. It is more that the barriers between the circumstances of oneself and of the rest of the world have broken down, after all—after all that schooling, all that care. Lord, if it be thy will, let this cup pass from me. But when you are thirty-three, or thirty-five, the cup must come around, cannot pass from you, and it is the same cup of pain that every mortal drinks from. Dana cried over Mrs. Hilton. My eyes filled during the nightly news. Obviously we were grieving for ourselves, but we were also thinking that if they were feeling what we were feeling, how could they stand it? We were grieving for them, too. I understand that later you come to an age of hope, or at least resignation. I suspect it takes a long time to get there.”

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Book:The Age of Grief
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“Rosie and Mary had taken only a 10 percentage of this privilege - they were three minutes late leaving their room and took the second bus that went past rather than the first just so they could feel themselves standing at a bus stop in Manhattan, New York, surrounded by people who were short, dark and voluble rather than tall, blond and silent. The fatal part was the bus they got on. They, of course stood, because they had been taught to do so, out of respect to everyone else in the whole world - they were from the Midwest and deference was their habit and their training. ......."Did you see that?" "What?" replied Mary "That woman." "God, she was rude," said Mary. And from that statement Rosalind knew that Mary would live the rest of her life in the Midwest, which she did.”

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Author:Jane Smiley
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“Cuando los niños estaban conmigo, pensaba que tenían vidas ordenadas y sencillas. A diferencia de cuando vivíamos todos en familia, apenas me enfadaba con ellos. Casi todo lo que hacían me parecía bien. Lejos de Pat, sin esa supervisión insoportable, sin esos constantes requerimientos de atención y respuesta, mi furia se esfumaba. Dejé de ser la intermediaria entre el capataz y los peones, la responsable de todo. La mujer que acababa el día hecha jirones y que era remendada durante la noche con el único propósito de poder ser despedazada de nuevo a la mañana siguiente.”

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Author:Jane Smiley
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“If novels and stories are bulletins from the progressive states of ignorance a writer passes through over the years, observations and opinions about horses are all the more so, since horses are more mysterious than life and harder to understand.”

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Book:A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses, Humans, Love, Money and Luck
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