A novelist has two lives-- a reading and writing life, and a lived life. he or she cannot be understood at all apart from this.
Jane SmileyWhen people leave, they always seem to scoop themselves out of you.
Jane SmileyIf living 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 SmileyTags: writing
The novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness.
Jane SmileyEvery first draft is perfect, because all a first draft has to do is exist.
Jane SmileyEvery first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist. It's perfect in its existence. The only way it could be imperfect would be to NOT exist.
Jane SmileyTags: first-drafts
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.
Jane SmileyTags: age growing-older grief
War is inevitable when the world is fallen. If you stop one, another will start. Redemption is the only path away from war.
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