Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

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

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

There is a sociology of horses, as well as a psychology. It is most evident in the world of horse racing, where many horses are gathered together, where year after year, decade after decade, they do the same, rather simple thing - run in races and try to win.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

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
Jane Smiley

In many ways, being honest about 'Huckleberry Finn' goes right to the heart of whether we can be honest about our heritage and our identity as Americans.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation.

Jane Smiley
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.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

Literature - novels, plays, and poems - can have an uncanny dual life, where they simultaneously represent something eternal and something historical, and this is often how they are taught in school.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

When 'The Awakening' was published it was considered so scandalous it was banned in the author's home-town library, and she herself was barred from the Fine Arts Club in the same city. What the novel has to offer, among other things, is honesty.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

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
Jane Smiley

All equestrians, if they last long enough, learn that riding in whatever form is a lifelong sport and art, an endeavor that is both familiar and new every time you take the horse out of his stall or pasture.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too.

Jane Smiley
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.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

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
Jane Smiley

I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

English majors understand human nature better than economists do.

Jane Smiley
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.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

'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.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

There are several methods for introducing your children to driving, and all of them are bad. Probably the worst is to put it off.

Jane Smiley
Jane Smiley

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