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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.

— Jane Smiley Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2006)

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More quotes by Jane Smiley

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2006)

She said, “Some are born bossy, some achieve bossiness, and some have bossiness thrust upon them.”

Golden Age (2015)

The novel is, above all, an intense experience of prolonged intimacy with another consciousness.

Charles Dickens (2003)

What truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute — for horses.

A Year at the Races (2004)

I learned why "out riding alone" is an oxymoron: An equestrian is never alone, is always sensing the other being, the mysterious but also understandable living being that is the horse.

All Jane Smiley quotes →

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jane Smiley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.