Jane Smiley - Novel Quotes

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Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting.

Jane Smiley

The desire to write a novel is the single required prerequisite for writing a novel.

Jane Smiley

Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.

Jane Smiley

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

Jane Smiley

Writing novels is an essentially amateur activity.

Jane Smiley

In a comic novel, the language has to stay perky so the reader will keep laughing. And yet it sort of defies making it deep, so it's hard to make it both funny and profound, comic and deep, all at the same time.

Jane Smiley