When I came home for the summer after my first year of college, I told my mother that my best friend and I were driving to California. She laughed out loud – 2,000 miles in a what? Well, my best friend had an old Chevy. What could go wrong? – 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
I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures. – Jane Smiley
In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion. – Jane Smiley