Jane Smiley Quotes

One piece of advice I have is: Want something else more than success. Success is a lovely thing, but your desire to say something, your worth, and your identity shouldn’t rely on it, because it’s not guaranteed and it’s not permanent and it’s not sufficient. So work hard, fall in love with the writing — the characters, the story, the words, the themes — and make sure that you are who you are regardless of your life circumstances. That way, when the good things come, they don’t warp you, and when the bad things hit you, you don’t fall apart.

And have you not received faculties which will enable you to bear all that happens to you? Have you not received greatness of spirit? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?

My biggest success is getting over the things that have tried to destroy and take me out of this life. Those are my biggest successes. It has nothing to do with work.

If I'm uncomfortable, you'd never know.

Strength of character does not consist solely in having powerful feelings, but in maintaining one’s balance in spite of them

Inner strength is very important.

I don't want people to feel sorry for me or pity me - I want people to know that what got me through was human spirit and everyone has that in them.

I do not murmur, even if my heart break.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.

The lessons we learn from patience will cultivate our character, lift our lives, and heighten our happiness.

There was a point that I stopped crying. It's not just because I didn't feel pain anymore, not because I didn't feel sorrow. It was just to keep going. I mean, it just was to survive, to live.

Any fool can fight a winning battle, but it needs character to fight a losing one, and that should inspire us; which reminds me that I dreamed the other night that I was being hanged, but was the life and soul of the party.

He insisted on a single trade secret: that you had to survive, find some quiet, and work hard every day.

You've only mastered the storm you can sleep through.

There's something about strength that I really admire, that I failed to see a lot of when I was growing up.

Character - Some day, you will be wrestling with the great temptation, or trembling under the great sorrow of your life. But the real struggle is here, now, in these quiet weeks. Now it is being decided whether, in the day of your supreme sorrow or temptation, you shall miserably fail or gloriously conquer. Character cannot be made except by a steady, long-continued process.

Fortify courage with the true rampart of patience.

Can't react every time you're insulted. Free people absorb destructive things and refuse to be destroyed

...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that it's just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats - maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats - but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be.

I hope that people take away hope, maybe not in an obvious sense, but in the form of hearing somebody who's genuinely fighting to stay above water. And in that fight, there's hope. In that fight, maybe there's positivity.

The best revenge is to always survive yourself.

It's hard to be strong and be weak at the same time. So I spent a lot of time sitting still. Sitting still for hours, not moving a muscle. Really concentrated work, so I'm ready. I'm ready for my performance.

He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn't beaten.

It takes far less courage to kill yourself than it takes to wake up one more time. It is harder to stay where you are than to get out.