Top 200 Jane Smiley Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “Frankie sticking his tongue out. Joe knew that Frankie knew that Joe knew he was sticking his tongue out, so it was no use to pretend.”

— Jane Smiley

202. “Those who are especially destructive they call ‘wolves’ or ‘jackals,’ but there is no wolf or jackal in the world who has been remotely as destructive as the average human.”

— Jane Smiley

203. “It seems clear, though, from the history of novel writing since Dickens’s time, that the production of enduring literary art has little or no relationship to market success, except insofar as a publisher can fund the publication of more complex and difficult works with the profits of a steady stream of popular stories. Even the most “loyal” readers grow “disloyal” when the work fails to please them.”

— Jane Smiley

204. “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.”

— Jane Smiley

205. “Opa used to tease her. He would open her mouth and look at her teeth, like she was a horse. Then he would say, ‘Callie, you are more than ten and less than a hundred.’ Well, she was a poor girl, in the end.”

— Jane Smiley

206. “After him came a cast of characters out of her worst nightmares – Linda Chavez, Arch Puddington, twenty others as bad, all of whom, she could imagine, had a secret password such as a derogatory remark about Toni Morrison, whom Margaret considered a goddess.”

— Jane Smiley

207. “Labeling them, in fact, prevented knowing them.”

— Jane Smiley

208. “She looked out the window of her office, feeling that she had passed through a doorway that she had never realized was there.”

— Jane Smiley

209. “Sometimes the thing that you wanted to do did make you sigh, just because it was a hard thing to do.”

— Jane Smiley

210. “What would happen there she had no idea, but 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.”

— Jane Smiley

211. “There were so many things Rosanna could have been besides a farm wife, she thought. But it was not a source of regret – it was a source of pride.”

— Jane Smiley

212. “The Lord is just about to that point he was with the Nephilim – sick and tired of the sin.”

— Jane Smiley

213. “It is hard to know whether an air of self-confidence precedes or follows success.”

— Jane Smiley

214. “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.”

— Jane Smiley

215. “Eavesdropping is a habit fiction writers get into. Fiction writing will lead you into a number of socially unacceptable practices.”

— Jane Smiley

216. “Holiday Association.”

— Jane Smiley

217. “In those days all stories ended with the wedding.”

— Jane Smiley

218. “Jean shrugged and said, “My dear, if you don’t have crazy relatives in this world, you are one of a kind.”

— Jane Smiley

219. “What you did when you wanted to get away with something was not to plan, but to look for an opportunity.”

— Jane Smiley

220. “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.”

— Jane Smiley

221. “What do you think makes you start laughing and unable to stop?”

— Jane Smiley

222. “But now I saw with fresh conviction that is was us, all of us, who were failing, and the hallmark of our failure was the way we ate with our heads down, hungrily, quickly, because there was nothing else to do at the table.”

— Jane Smiley

223. “Margret saw that this is how it is that folk are made to desire what they know they should not have, they are made to wait for it, so that when it comes, no matter how dark and full of sin and repellent it is, they are glad enough to welcome it.”

— Jane Smiley

224. “I believe that you either love the work or the rewards. Life is a lot easier if you love the work.”

— Jane Smiley

225. “Well, Jesus never did a single bad thing, but when he was crucified, he made up for all the bad things that other people had done. That’s why he was crucified.”

— Jane Smiley

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

— Jane Smiley

227. “Yes, working for Mrs. Parks had given her liberties that were rare here, rare in Kalamazoo, and, she suspected, rare everywhere.”

— Jane Smiley

228. “He was turning out to be one of those men whose interest diminished as they got to know you. You got into this pattern of trying to be interesting by revealing more and more of yourself, like a salesman unpacking his sample bag, but the man, though he looked like he was smiling and paying attention, was really shaking his head internally – not that, not that either, no I don’t think so, not today.”

— Jane Smiley

229. “There was a word Papa always shook his head after pronouncing – it was “bank.” Frank wasn’t sure which of the three things that could go wrong at a bank Papa was worried about – the bank “going under,” the bank “cutting him off,” or the bank getting robbed.”

— Jane Smiley

230. “Otherwise, my life passed in a blur, that blessing of urban routine. The sense of distinct events that is so inescapable on a farm, where every rainstorm is thick with odor and color, and usefulness and timing, where omens of prosperity or ruin to come are sought in every change, where any of the world’s details may contain the one thing that above all else you will regret not knowing, this sense lifted off me. Maybe another way of saying it is that I forgot I was still alive.”

— Jane Smiley

231. “Her idea was that there was no such thing as provocation, that no matter what she did, Pete simply should not hit her, and therefore if he did hit her he was entirely wrong, and therefore she was perfectly free to do whatever she wanted. The result was that I lived in fear for her. Once she said, “If it were you being hit, you wouldn’t be afraid, either. You’d be mad, I promise.”

— Jane Smiley

232. “A girl who made no mistakes about the right shade of lipstick would always land on her feet.”

— Jane Smiley

233. “Still others reflected on how quickly the food could be snatched from a man’s table, or the child from a woman’s breast, or the wife from a man’s bedcloset, that no strength of grasp could hold these goods in place. And others remarked to themselves how sweet these goods were, in spite of that, and saw that pleasure lost in every moment is pleasure lost forever.”

— Jane Smiley