00:55
Jane Smiley Highlight
You stand a much better chance of being successful at something you really want to do than something you're only doing reluctantly.
About Jane
- Was never scared, never felt pressure to do well financially because she "was an idiot."
- Obtained a double degree in creative writing and medieval English literature from Iowa State University in 1978.
- She was content to live a very simple life so that she could go to graduate school, write her novels.
- Was "going along, writing her novels" and living this simple life until she won the Pulitzer Prize in 1992, found sudden success.
- Believes that you won't be "humiliated" by starting at the bottom if you're at the bottom of a ladder you really want to climb.
- Likens building a career to learning to skateboard; "all those times you fell off, you weren't bothered to be humiliated; you just wanted to do it."
- The people who are scared to fall or embarrassed to fail are "focused on the wrong thing," "aren't going to get anywhere."
- Says all of her friends who gave up their passions later felt "lost," didn't know who they were by the time they turned forty or fifty.
