{"author":"Jane Smiley","author_id":"Jane+Smiley","total_quotes":36,"quotes":[{"text":"Every spot on earth is particular, detailed, and incomprehensibly complex.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["complexity","travel"],"id":815,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"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.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["progress","live","you "],"id":19868,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"Evil people must spread their evil everywhere.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["evil","evil-people","evil-thoughts"],"id":33574,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"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.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["cancer","depression"],"id":34220,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"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 'no's. He could lie under the bed and not be told anything at all.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["childhood-games","memories","under-the-bed"],"id":44081,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"She always said, 'When I'm home, I've got to get things done, even if there are visitors. Elizabeth knows how to relax in her own house.' And then she would shake her head, as if Elizabeth had remarkable powers.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["anxiety","cleaning","home","housework","relaxation"],"id":49111,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"This is true, at the least, that no veil of beauty hides the evils from our sight.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["beauty","evil","truth"],"id":65005,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["death","new york","museum "],"id":67414,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"I discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor but also an example of life's mystery and unpredictability, of life's generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["life","horse","mystery "],"id":107744,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"},{"text":"The novel as a form is usually seen to be moral if its readers consider freedom, individuality, democracy, privacy, social connection, tolerance and hope to be morally good, but it is not considered moral if the highest values of a society are adherence to rules and traditional mores, the maintenance of hierarchical relationships, and absolute ideas of right and wrong. Any society based on the latter will find novels inherently immoral and subversive.","author":"Jane Smiley","tags":["books"],"id":121809,"author_id":"Jane+Smiley"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":36,"pages":4,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}