Jane Smiley Quotes

I think you know everything at eight. But is is hidden from you, sealed up, in a way you have to cut yourself open to find.

I never met a person from whom I did not learn something.

As I've gotten older, and now that my kids are starting to do what they do, I am now really focusing on sharing my knowledge and insights with them to help guide them on their journeys.

Always try to associate yourself with and learn as much as you can from those who know more than you do, who do better than you, who see more clearly than you.

The truth, I discovered, is a tree that grows as a man gains access to experience. A child sees the acorn of his daily life, but a man looks back on the oak.

My hope is that I'm getting better and wiser. With every book, I have more of myself to pour onto the page.

Keep learning; don't be arrogant by assuming that you know it all, that you have a monopoly on the truth; always assume that you can learn something from someone else.

Everything that I talk about, pretty much, are things that I learned or understood over the years.

It is good to live and learn.

Because after a time having a secret and nobody knowing you have a secret us no fun. And although you dont want others to know what the secret is, you want them to at least know you have one.

Do not ask if a man has been through college; ask if a college has been through him; if he is a walking university.

The secrets of the world are very marvellous, but they are not themselves half so wonderful as the way in which they become known to the world.

There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this.

When you get as old as I am, you start to realize that you've told most of the good stuff you know to other people anyway.

And when I read, and really I do not read so much, only a few authors, - a few men that I discovered by accident - I do this because they look at things in a broader, milder and more affectionate way than I do, and because they know life better, so that I can learn from them.

In my early years I read very hard. It is a sad reflection, but a true one, that I knew almost as much at eighteen as I do now.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

It takes a great deal of living to get a little deal of learning.

The older you get, the more you have to talk about, and music is a really good outlet. I've chilled on it a little bit, and I can't wait to see what I'm going to step into, now that I have this collection of things.

None of us was born knowing or wise; but men become wise by consideration, observation, experience.

Age has given me what I was looking for my entire life - it gave me me. It provided the time and experience and failures and triumphs and friends who helped me step into the shape that had been waiting for me all my life...I not only get along with me most of the time now, I am militantly and maternally on my own side.

If you accept learning as a dominant determination of your behavior, then all of a sudden you're open to the idea that, for instance, there are other people who are more educated than you about the environment, who you will learn from. It's kind of like you don't even have to believe that you know anything about the environment, but you do have to understand that your behavior has been determined by learning in the past.

No, Edward. You are here so I can teach you something. All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you.

I try never to let my schooling get in the way of my education.