Smiley Quotes

If American literature has a few heroes, Miller is one of them. He refused to name names at the McCarthy hearings, and his play 'The Crucible' analysed the hearings in the context of a previous American mass psychosis, the Salem witch trials. ~ Jane Smiley

It once amused me that it took me three tries to pass my driver's test and that my driving instructor told my mother that I was the least talented person behind the wheel that she had ever taught. ~ Jane Smiley

And all of this leaves me wondering if this dream of mine-that out there, somewhere, hiding, there exists a guy who is cultured and calm, and smiley and faithful, who want´s to escape the rat-race with me and, apparently like the French, wear wellies and make cheese...Well, I wonder if it can possibly exist. I don´t want much...just someone who would flat on his stomach next to me in the garden watching ants carrying crumbs through the jungle of blades of grass. I wonder if that can ever exist, anywhere, for anyone. ~ Nick Alexander

One more consideration also weighed with Smiley, though in his paper he is too gentlemanly to mention it. A lot of ghosts walked in those post-fall days, and one of them was a fear that, buried somewhere in the Circus, lay Bill Haydon's chosen successor: that Bill had brought him on, recruited and educated him against the very day when he himself, one way or another, would fade from the scene. Sam was originally a Haydon nominee. His later victimisation by Haydon could easily have been a put-up job. Who was to say, in that very jumpy atmosphere, that Sam Collins, manoeuvring for readmission, was not the heir elect to Haydon's treachery?
For all these reasons George Smiley put on his raincoat and got himself out on the street. Willingly, no doubt - for at heart, he was still a case man. Even his detractors gave him that. ~ John Le Carre

I am not a birch. ~ Santino Hassell

It is very often asserted that fear is destructive. Yet this is not entirely true; when fear is felt about things that truly threaten security, it is protective. It is very fortunate that humans have an almost unlimited capacity for learning fears; otherwise we would have been eliminated long ago. ~ Smiley Blanton

Smiley was the oddest. You thought, to look at him, that he couldn't cross the road alone, but you might as well have offered protection to a hedgehog. ~ John Le Carre

I don't like smiley pictures. A smile is a defense mechanism. It says, You can't have the real me but here's my smile. You get closer to the real person when they stop smiling. ~ Chris Killip

Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying. ~ Rebecca Stead

Hello, Olympus! Aeolus, master of the winds here, with weather every twelve! We'll have a low-pressure system moving over Florida today, so expect milder temperatures since Demeter wishes to spare the citrus farmers!‖ He gestured at the blue screen, but when Jason checked the monitors, he saw that a digital image was being projected behind Aeolus, so it looked like he was standing in front of a U.S. map with animated smiley suns and frowny storm clouds. ―Along the eastern seaboard - oh, hold on.‖ He tapped his earpiece. ―Sorry, folks! Poseidon is angry with Miami today, so it looks like that Florida freeze is back on! Sorry, Demeter. Over in the Midwest, I'm not sure what St. Louis did to offend Zeus, but you can expect winter storms! Boreas himself is being called down to punish the area with ice. Bad news, Missouri! No, wait. Hephaestus feels sorry for central Missouri, so you all will have much more moderate temperatures and sunny skies. ~ Rick Riordan

A northerner, insensitive in some ways and full of self-righteousness could gravely offend a southerner in a second. The northerner would be giving his general opinion, more than likely unasked for, and all unknowing challenging the southerner's every deeply held belief, not to mention, with sundry looks and expressions, suggesting that the southerner was possessed of numerous flaws of character and person. The southerner was bound to see offense in every suggestion, insult in every difference of opinion, and to act upon his stung pride. ~ Jane Smiley

...and the thick, sugary covering of the snow... ~ Jane Smiley

To be happy, drop the words 'if only' and substitute instead the words 'next time'. ~ Smiley Blanton

Eavesdrop and write it down from memory - gives you a stronger sense of how people talk and what their concerns are. I love to eavesdrop! ~ Jane Smiley

While the culture is constantly focused on fluff and positivity, God's Word offers not just a competing worldview but a contrary one. The Bible is not some retouched photo of the human condition, sanitized to save everyone the heartache of reality. The Bible brings far more than a smiley preacher with platitudes that fade before sunset. The Scriptures bring stark reality, the depravity of the human heart apart from God. His Word declares the dangers of sin using the lives of men and women who needed a front-row seat to learn that all sin brings suffering. These real people are not presented to us as perfect but as those whom God was working on. ~ James MacDonald

I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic. ~ Jane Smiley

Candy is my fuel. Ice cream, too. ~ Jane Smiley

Why are Scots so attracted to the secret world? Smiley wondered, not for the first time in his career. Ships' engineers, Colonial administrators, spies. . . . Their heretical Scottish history drew them to distant churches, he decided. "George! ~ John Le Carre

If I was on an island, just for melody, I would take albums by the Stones, AC/DC and the Beach Boys' Smiley Smile. ~ Steven Tyler

Another thing he told his customers was that one of the great accounting unknowns of the modern age was how to value knowledge. It was an exciting field. ~ Jane Smiley

The choices we make about the lives we live determine the kinds of legacies we leave. ~ Tavis Smiley

[Smiley contemplates graffiti:]'Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.' The assertion caused him a moment's indecision. 'Oh, but society does,' he wanted to reply; 'society is an association of minorities. ~ John Le Carre

Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out. ~ Jane Smiley

She said, Some are born bossy, some achieve bossiness, and some have bossiness thrust upon them. ~ Jane Smiley

There weren't too many books by women that were taught in school, so I read those on my own, and the books I read were as accessible as the ones we were reading in school. ~ Jane Smiley

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader. ~ Jane Smiley

Do you think I would want to live under a government that you ran or set up? It's all very nice to say you're an anarchist, but you only want anarchy for yourself. For the rest of us, you want to make sure we do what you say, think how you think, and remember you're the boss. ~ Jane Smiley

I was so happy every morning when I woke up that I was pissing smiley faces. ~ Nikki Sixx

Upstairs, in the cupboard, he had a box of things he had saved as a boy and a young man. He hadn't looked into it in twenty years or more. Nothing fancy or valuable, but things that had meant something to him at one time. He found it, and found the key, and carried it downstairs without opening it. ~ Jane Smiley

That's a lot of vegetables. "It is, yes, and if you eat them like a good girl ... " He lifted the silver lid on another plate, revealed a small pizza, with pepperoni arranged into a smiley face. She tried to give him a stony stare, but the laugh won out. "You think you're cute, don't you, pal?" "Adorable." "In this case, you can have adorable. Ow!" She managed the stony stare when he slapped her hand away from the pizza. "Vegetables first. ~ Nora Roberts

Laura's gossip was redeemed by its lack of spite. She was warmly objective about every event, taking endless delight in action and complexity, as if she had been bed-ridden in a small windowless room for years and was just now discovering the dramatic possibilities of daily life. She sang Alice through the day. ~ Jane Smiley

She dressed to look good, and I dressed for obscurity. ~ Jane Smiley

I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group. ~ Jane Smiley

We're not going to be sad. We're going to be angry until we die. It's the only hope. ~ Jane Smiley

It is in the early morning hour that the unseen is seen, and that the far-off beauty and glory, vanquishing all their vagueness, move down upon us till they stand clear as crystal close over against the soul. ~ Sarah Smiley

Novelists never have to footnote. ~ Jane Smiley

It still astounds me, after forty years, that there is no good bread between Chicago and San Francisco. ~ Jane Smiley

I may get a thousand likes and words of appreciation from others but why is it that just one smiley from you means the world to me. ~ Avijeet Das

Oh, you can't back out now. I already texted Adam that you'll be there."

His head swung around. "You what?"

"He's looking forward to it. See?" She held up her phone.

A smiley face.

A smiley face? Nick had no idea what that meant. Was that casual happy? Excited happy? An obligatory response that didn't mean anything? It wasn't even a D smiley. It was one of the parenthesis ones.

God, he was trying to puzzle out the hidden meaning of the punctuation in a frigging emoticon.

"You look nervous," said Quinn.

He shrugged. ~ Brigid Kemmerer

Whatever you love is beautiful; love comes first, beauty follows. The greater your capacity for love, the more beauty you find in the world. ~ Jane Smiley

Competition's always been a product of American lifestyle ~ Tavis Smiley

I was asked by an editor to consider writing something about an American inventor. I asked him if he knew who invented the computer. He said he didn't. In that case, I told him, I should write a book about John Vincent Atanasoff. ~ Jane Smiley

But he was sixty-two when I was, born, and the novelty of daughters had worn away long before. ~ Jane Smiley

Love is a general emotion. Marriage is exactingly specific. ~ Jane Smiley

English majors understand human nature better than economists do. ~ Jane Smiley

Another thing I learned is that novels, even those from apparently distant times and places, remain current and enlightening, and also comforting. ~ Jane Smiley

Surprised. Then everyone, by unspoken ~ Jane Smiley

She did not think it any coincidence that ideas denigrating literary authorship had taken center stage simultaneously with the emergence of formerly silent voices for whom the act of writing, and publishing, had the deepest and most delicious possible meaning, simultaneously with the emergence of an audience for whom the act of thinking and writing was an act of skeptical anger, sometimes a transitional act to violence. ~ Jane Smiley

And of course there was no help for it, except recalling bits of conversations she had overheard from time to time about marriage. That's what knitting groups and sewing groups were for, wasn't it? Commiserating about marriage. ~ Jane Smiley

I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do. ~ Martin Seligman

And then the rose-border. What intensity in those odorous buds of the Bon Silene, making the very spirit bound as though a message had reached it from heaven. And the verbena bed is compassed with fitful fragrance. Even the pansies, with their dewy eyes, are ready to rival the violets now ... Nor must the purple buds of the calycanthus be forgotten. 'Sweet-scented shrub' indeed; for let me hide but a single one of these in some fold of my dress, and the spices of Araby will float around me till the evening. ~ Sarah Smiley

Nobody can be all smiley all the time, but having a good positive attitude isn't something to shrug off. ~ Yogi Berra

The first and finest lesson that parents can teach their children is faith and courage. ~ Smiley Blanton

Animals might put up with that smiley shit, but people will eventually kill you for it. ~ Christopher Moore

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

Failure was startling, really. So startling that I hardly noticed it at all. ~ Jane Smiley

My role on television is one of helping people reexamine the assumptions that they hold. I regard Dr. King. You would never hear me get up and speak without in some way, shape or form, referencing, Dr. King. ~ Tavis Smiley

Hungry ears are sharp ones. ~ Jane Smiley

And your wife, she's in the pink and so on?"
His expressions were also boyish.
"Very bonny, thank you," said Smiley, trying gallantly to respond in kind. ~ John Le Carre

It was written in a red felt marker, and his first thought was that it was from Sarah, though it didn't look like a girl's writing. A girl would make it pretty, with kisses and smiley faces, and she would do it in colored pens and make an envelope as well. ~ Todd Young

It didn't occur to us. We had swum in the ocean of religion all our lives and not gotten wet. ~ Jane Smiley

She had a cloth in her hands. She said, Frankie hungry? ~ Jane Smiley

Take naps. Often new ideas come together when you are half asleep, but you have to train yourself to remember them. ~ Jane Smiley

The draft," he shouts, "is white people sending black people to make war on yellow people in order to defend the land they stole from red people. The draft must end: not tomorrow, not next week, but today. ~ Tavis Smiley

A smiley face brightens cyber space. Smiling pics and emoticons are good netiquette. NetworkEtiquette.net ~ David Chiles

A love story, at least a convincing one, requires three elements - the lover, the beloved, and the adventures they have together. ~ Jane Smiley

Once again, the curious thing was how strange and forceful the world was, how it battered and clanged and could not be withstood, and yet some individuals withstood it while others did not. ~ Jane Smiley

Smiley himself was one of those solitaires who seem to have come into the world fully educated at the age of eighteen. Obscurity was his nature, as well as his profession. The byways of espionage are not populated by the brash and colourful adventurers of fiction. A man who, like Smiley, has lived and worked for years among his country's enemies learns only one prayer: that he may never, never be noticed. Assimilation is his highest aim, he learns to love the crowds who pass him in the street without a glance; he clings to them for his anonimity and his safety. His fear makes him servile - he could embrace the shoppers who jostle him in their impatience, and force him from the pavement. He could adore the officials, the police, the bus conductors, for the terse indifference of their attitudes. (ch. 9) ~ John Le Carre

Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them. ~ Jane Smiley

Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider - to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion.
(Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer) ~ Konrad Zuse

I wanna get a piece of bread and draw a smiley face on it with condiments then take pictures just because I'm young and I can - y o l o ~ Myself

I've experienced having you in the house. It's like living with a loud motor running all the time. Up, down, into this room and that room, eating supper, jumping from the table, cursing all the time, yelling over the telephone about things, laughing, making deals all the time. You take up a lot of space and make a lot of noise." She ~ Jane Smiley

I have a theory which I suspect is rather immoral,' Smiley went on, more lightly. 'Each of us has only a quantum of compassion. That if we lavish our concern on every stray cat, we never get to the centre of things. ~ John Le Carre

Almonds. Apricots. Avocadoes. Some peaches I don't know. Grapefruit. Lemones. Probably oranges. ~ Jane Smiley

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. ~ Jane Smiley

He's probably chasing their teacher, Your Honor. Until she catches him. ~ Jim Smiley

said, looking for a job on Broadway. ~ Jane Smiley

Her parents took her very seriously; she had trained them, with a combination of treats and punishments, to allow her to do as she pleased and express herself, and to pay attention to her opinions. Thanks ~ Jane Smiley

Good intentions are wicked! As far as I can see, all they lead to are lies and delusions. ~ Jane Smiley

If you don't have courage, you can't practice any of the other virtues. ~ Tavis Smiley

Evil people must spread their evil everywhere. ~ Jane Smiley

Smiley TV preachers might tell you that following Jesus is about being good so that God will bless you with cash and prizes, but really it's much more gruesome and meaningful. It's about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live. ~ Nadia Bolz-Weber

'Lean on Pete' is the story of a boy and his horse, but it is never heart-warming - it ranges in tone from desperate to merely painful - and, while fascinating, it is never entertaining or redemptive. But if you want an unadorned portrait of American life (at least in some places) at the beginning of the 21st century, this is the book for you. ~ Jane Smiley

Why are we reading a Shakespeare play or 'Huckleberry Finn?' Well, because these works are great, but they also tell us something about the times in which they were created. Unfortunately, previous eras and dead authors often used language or accepted as normal sentiments that we now find unacceptable. ~ Jane Smiley

Ignorance is a self-generating state of mind; one of its characteristics is that it doesn't recognize itself as ignorance. ~ Jane Smiley

My, my," he said, looking the note over. "If only students would write this much in their essays. One of you has considerably worse writing than the other, so forgive me if I get anything wrong here." He cleared his throat."'So, I saw J last night,' begins the person with bad handwriting, to which the response is,'What happened,' followed by no fewer than five question marks. Understandable, since sometimes one - let alone four - just won't get the point across, eh?" The class laughed, and I noticed Mia throwing me a particularly mean smile. "The first speaker responds:'What do you think happened? We hooked up in one of the empty lounges.'"
Mr. Nagy glanced up after hearing some more giggles in the room. His British accent only added to the hilarity.
"May I assume by this reaction that the use of 'hook up' pertains to the more recent, shall we say,carnal application of the term than the tamer one I grew up with?"
More snickers ensued. Straightening up, I said boldly, "Yes, sir, Mr. Nagy. That would be correct, sir."
A number of people in the class laughed outright.
"Thank you for that confirmation, Miss Hathaway. Now, where was I? Ah yes, the other speaker then asks,'How was it?' The response is,'Good,' punctuated with a smiley face to confirm said adjective. Well. I suppose kudos are in order for the mysterious J, hmmm?'So, like, how far did you guys go?' Uh, ladies," said Mr. Nagy, "I do hope this doesn't surpass a PG rating.'Not very.We got caught. ~ Richelle Mead

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. ~ Jane Smiley

My mom was paranoid about my safety. ~ Jane Smiley

I feel like I've been successful after being done with the film is when I see it, if I'm embarrassed, if I'm slightly mortified, and if I feel super-vulnerable, I think I did something. ~ Tavis Smiley

dark, wet sides of the well dropped maybe ~ Jane Smiley

When you work for something, you appreciate it more. So what are y'all going to do with all the opportunities you inherited that you didn't have to work for? ~ Tavis Smiley

Everybody should have their own personal logo. Mine is a smiley face that's winking, as if I'm passing on secret knowledge. But it's not like I tell just anybody. My secrets are so sought after that the NSA is always whispering at me to try to get me to give them something, anything. ~ Jarod Kintz

The tub must be very heavy. His biceps strain against his sleeves, like he's Bruce Banner mid-Hulkifying, and the veins stand out on his neck. The water smells faintly of rose petals. He uses a lemonade pitcher decorated with smiley-faced suns as a ladle, and I lean my head back for him. He starts to work in the shampoo, and I push his hands away. This part I can do myself. ~ Rick Yancey

There is something I have noticed about desire, that it opens the eyes and strikes them blind at the same time. ~ Jane Smiley

How will you know a good farmer when you meet him? He will not ask you for any favors. ~ Jane Smiley

Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture. ~ Tavis Smiley

'The Good Soldier' is an odd and maybe even unique book. That it is a masterpiece, almost a perfect novel, comes as a repeated surprise even to readers who have read it before. ~ Jane Smiley

Liam's hands are curled into fists, as if he is ready to throw punches right in the middle of IHOP, which is of course a dumb place to fight. There are children here, and polyester booths, and smiley-face pancakes. Multiple kinds of syrup. Some of the drinks even come with maraschino cherries. ~ Julie Buxbaum

Sometimes rejection in life is really redirection. ~ Tavis Smiley

Like most of the educated, I do harbor a fondness for the sins of my ignorant past. ~ Jane Smiley