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a946549
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Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.
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reading
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Jane Smiley |
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27f830b
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But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses
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horses
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Jane Smiley |
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8b1edd4
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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.
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depression
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Jane Smiley |
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f69517a
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Fascination with horses predated every other single thing I knew. Before I was a mother, before I was a writer, before I knew the facts of life, before I was a schoolgirl, before I learned to read, I wanted a horse.
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racing
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Jane Smiley |
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4aab712
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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.
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Jane Smiley |
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a490fdc
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The fact is that the same sequence of days can arrange themselves into a number of different stories.
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Jane Smiley |
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c1e613f
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If 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.
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Jane Smiley |
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d0e16ba
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I suspected that there were things he knew that I had been waiting all my life to learn.
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Jane Smiley |
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00ca4c3
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She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. She looked at Walter, who was so far away from her, all the way at the other end of the table, having a laugh with Andrea, who had a beautiful suit on, navy blue with a tiny waist and white collar and cuffs..
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Jane Smiley |
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7e62be5
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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..
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grief
growing-older
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Jane Smiley |
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412440d
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The novel integrates several forms of human intelligence - verbal intelligence (for the style), psychological intelligence (for the characters), logical intelligence (for the plot), spatial intelligence (for the symbolic and metaphorical content as well as the setting), and even musical intelligence (for pacing and rhythm.
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Jane Smiley |
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3c3126e
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Daddy thinks history starts fresh every day, every minute, that time itself begins with the feelings he's having right now. That's how he keeps betraying us, why he roars at us with such conviction.
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Jane Smiley |
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8a67a0b
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Shame is a distinct feeling. I couldn't look at my hands around the coffee cup or hear my own laments without feeling appalled, wanting desperately to fall silent, grow smaller. More than that, I was uncomfortably conscious of my whole body, from the awkward way that the shafts of my hair were thrusting out of my scalp to my feet, which felt dirty as well as cold. Everywhere, I seemed to feel my skin from the inside, as if it now stood away..
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Jane Smiley |
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f5554ec
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Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it at all.
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racing
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Jane Smiley |
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3fbb501
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In her minds eye she sat there, in the domesticated golden sunlight on the velvet sofa, lapped around by carpets and books and mahogany, solitary and content, as if, in fact, cloistered.
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Jane Smiley |
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605c97f
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But even though I felt her presence, I also felt the habitual fruitlessness of thinking about her. Her images, partly memories of her, partly memories of photos I had seen of her, yielded no new answers to old mysteries.
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Jane Smiley |
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0b89b26
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The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens th..
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spirituality
humor
balance
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Jane Smiley |
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4c272ef
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Well, being a perfectionist seems okay from the outside, but a perfectionist never enjoys anything, no matter how well it goes, because nothing is ever perfect.
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Jane Smiley |
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ffc6396
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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.
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reality
fact
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Jane Smiley |
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ffacbe9
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A moment later, Jackie lifts himself into a canter. It is analyzable - I have seen the picture of how he steps so far under with his supporting hind leg that he is placing it right beneath where I am sitting; his leg and body become a U-shaped spring that lifts me forward - but it is not describable. It is neither floating nor springing. It is power without labor, thrust without force, the very opposite of any sort of aggression, the partic..
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Jane Smiley |
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8bcfce6
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Almonds. Apricots. Avocadoes. Some peaches I don't know. Grapefruit. Lemones. Probably oranges.
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Jane Smiley |
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d5db8bf
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You know when we came out of the clinic, and we saw those flower beds that we hadn't seen when we were walking in? That was so unexpected, I think it made me delirious somehow. And then it seemed like if we just threw off all restraints and talked wildly and ate wildly and shopped wildly, it would just turn up the delirium, and make it even better, or permanent somehow...
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Jane Smiley |
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076a91c
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contemplate the difference between a reason and an excuse. A reason is its own reward, but an excuse leads to disappointment every time.
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Jane Smiley |
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76a9694
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The best that can happen to a girl, Claire, is to be a bit plain, like you. You think I'm being unkind, but I am telling you a truth. A plain girl has a longer time to herself, and when a man falls in love with her, he loves her for herself, for who she is.
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Jane Smiley |
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b93c698
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I always feel a little guilty when I break bad news to someone, because that energy, of knowing something others don't, sort of puffs you up.
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Jane Smiley |
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0cd39b1
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We're not going to be sad. We're going to be angry until we die. It's the only hope.
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Jane Smiley |
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0cae736
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and the thick, sugary covering of the snow...
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Jane Smiley |
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de551f6
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Ron Paul, who, as someone said, wouldn't have regulated a sewer pipe running through his child's playroom.
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Jane Smiley |
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cc37c0b
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The real mystery was how your farm bound you to it, so tightly that you would pay any price (literally, in interest) or make any sacrifice just to take these steps across this familiar undulating ground time and time again.
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farmer
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Jane Smiley |
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6e51cf0
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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.
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mind
thoughts
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Jane Smiley |
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303ebc9
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When I went to first grade and the other children said that their fathers were farmers, I simply didn't believe them. I agreed in order to be polite, but in my heart I knew that those men were impostors, as farmers and as fathers, too. In my youthful estimation, Laurence Cook defined both categories. To really believe that others even existed in either category was to break the First Commandment.
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fathers
fathers-and-daughters
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Jane Smiley |
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5cbbc33
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She did not think it any coincidence that ideas denigrating literary authorship had taken center stage simultaneously with the emergence of formerly silent voices for whom the act of writing, and publishing, had the deepest and most delicious possible meaning, simultaneously with the emergence of an audience for whom the act of thinking and writing was an act of skeptical anger, sometimes a transitional act to violence.
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Jane Smiley |
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025f098
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I always think that things have to happen the way they do happen, that there are so many inner and outer forces joining at every event that it becomes a kind of fate. I learned from studying Buddhism that there's beauty, and certainly a lot of peace, in accepting that." I sniffed. A smile twinkled sheepishly across his face. "Okay, okay," he said, "how about this? If you worry about it, you draw it to you."
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Jane Smiley |
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b02a5ce
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I'm not strange to myself, but I realize that I contrast with others fairly sharply.
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Jane Smiley |
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972a636
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what it feels like to resist without seeming to resist, to absent yourself while seeming respectful and attentive.
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Jane Smiley |
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4cbc02f
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She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity.
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Jane Smiley |
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23f296b
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Some folk learned the nature of God, that He was merciful, having spared a husband or some cattle, that He was strict, having meted out hard punishment for small sins, that He was attentive, having sent signs of the hunger beforehand, that He was just, having sent the hunger in the first place, or having sent the whales and the teeming reindeer in the end. Some folk learned that He was to be found in the world-in the richness of the grass a..
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world
learning
life
wisdom
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Jane Smiley |
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2fdebc2
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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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Jane Smiley |
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0588626
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Who you are shapes how you are loved.
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Jane Smiley |
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f8f38e0
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and that's how the tournament started, the Million Dollar World Series of Monopoly... ...Jess and Pete thought alike -- like city boys, my father would have said, looking for the payoff in a situation rather than the pitfall. Rose and Ty and I played like farmers, looking for pitfalls, holes, drop-offs, something small that will tip the tractor, break it, eat into your time, your crop, the profits that already exist in your mind, and not on..
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Jane Smiley |
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7ea2fad
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Evil people must spread their evil everywhere.
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evil-thoughts
evil-people
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Jane Smiley |
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9a666ca
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We came to the corner, waited for the light, and crossed. I had no idea where we were going. I said, "I didn't realize you were so depressed." "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 all carry it off, and you don't c..
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|
Jane Smiley |
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5858e32
|
I am thirty-five years old, and it seems to me that I have reached the age of grief. Others arrive there sooner. Almost no one arrives much later. I don't think it is the 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, childre..
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Jane Smiley |
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9d6863d
|
I looked at her without replying. For me it had been more like being a passenger in a car that was going out of control. For three months we'd been swerving across the road, missing light poles and oncoming vehicles. Now the car was under control again,
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Jane Smiley |