Quotes from Jane Smiley

What Is Really Going On in Spain? was another. Who's the Boss? was about whether members of the

She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity.

It was the exact combination of the ephemeral and the eternal that a dying man needed to know about.

There were no toys under the bed--that wasn't why he liked it. Why he liked it was that there wasn't anything under the bed--no chickens, no Joey, no Eloise, no sheep, no nos. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all.

Epic Steam is easily offended. He has high standards of behavior with regard to his own person, and every human he has met so far has offended them. Other horses aren't so bad—they have been capable of learning, and so they don't offend him, and he isn't mean with them, only bossy. It's the people who are blind and stubborn.

Once again, the curious thing was how strange and forceful the world was, how it battered and clanged and could not be withstood, and yet some individuals withstood it while others did not.

You don't make 'em trot for one thing and run for the other.

town. Denby. Population two hundred and fourteen.

I'm sorry. I would have to disagree. The most important thing is getting right with the Lord, and then he

Seeing him somewhere was always a pleasure, like taking a drink of water.

Northerners, even abolitionists, knew more about how and why to chop down the slavery tree than they ever knew what to do with its sour fruit.

We knew right off how to think of them but not precisely how to feel about them.

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

Every first draft is perfect because all the first draft has to do is exist.

But now I feel that there was some aspect of fatedness about it. If I was going to do what, perhaps, I am meant to do, what I must do, there were things I had to learn.

That was another way in which Monterey was agreeable—no one pried, no one asked unpleasant questions. Perhaps the reason for that was that there were few churches, and most of those Catholic.

If you don't furnish your brain with what everyone knows, then it will furnish itself with what no one else knows!

Pastor Elmore roared out, " Ã¢â'¬ËœOn that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened!' And why was that, my friends? Why did the Lord see fit to destroy his own creation, like a sculptor who smashes his clay with his fist, or a painter who slashes his canvas? Why, because it wasn't right and good! And does the pot revile its creator for this? And does the painting weep? No!

The Lord is just about to that point he was with the Nephilim—sick and tired of the sin.

redound to the university's professed goal of excellence

And so he is sending us warning after warning. Did every single Nephilim man

if Monterey had taught her anything, it was to make the best of things. Every ship that sailed into the bay had to do what the winds demanded, whatever the captain's plans might be.

he hadn't had her as a teacher, which meant that he could tell her what

Teeth outlast everything. Death is nothing to a tooth. Hundreds of years in acidic soil just keeps a tooth clean. A fire that burns away hair and flesh and even bone leaves teeth dazzling like daisies in the ashes. Life is what destroys teeth.