“ 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 remarka… Jane Smiley
“ 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 grou… Jane Smiley
“ 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 disin… Jane Smiley
“ Twenty-five, he was. Twenty-five tomorrow. Some years the snow had melted for his birthday, but not this year, and so it had been a long winter full of cows. Jane Smiley
“ 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 el… Jane Smiley
“ But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before. Jane Smiley
“ 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 Y… Jane Smiley
“ Vets do what doctors used to - diagnose the injury or the condition, patch it up as best they can and remind you that these things happen and that in life we are also in the midst of death. Jane Smiley
“ But what truly horsey girls discover in the end is that boyfriends, husbands, children, and careers are the substitute-for horses Jane Smiley
“ When a novel has 200,000 words, then it is possible for the reader to experience 200,000 delights, and to turn back to the first page of the book and experience them all over again, perhaps more inten… Jane Smiley
“ I loved the house the way you would any new house, because it is populated by your future, the family of children who will fill it with noise or chaos and satisfying busy pleasures. Jane Smiley
“ And the horticulturalists really believed that gardening would save the world that agriculture was destroying. Jane Smiley
“ Mom was a smoker. My grandfather was a smoker. My aunts were smokers. My uncles were smokers. I don't know any smokers now, not even my mom. Jane Smiley
