Jane Smiley Quotes

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

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

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.

And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That’s what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn’t it? Commiserating about marriage.

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

The fundamental condition of childhood is powerlessness.

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.

I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.