The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.

Her novella The Age of Grief was made into the 2002 film The Secret Lives of Dentists. Biography
Born in Los Angeles California Smiley grew up in Webster Groves Missouri a suburb of St. Works


Novels
Barn Blind (1980)
At Paradise Gate (1981)
Duplicate Keys (1984)
The Greenlanders (1988)
Ordinary Love & Good Will (1989)
A Thousand Acres (1991)
Moo (1995)
The All-True Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton (1998)
Horse Heaven (2000)
Good Faith (2003)
Ten Days in the Hills (2007)
The Georges and the Jewels (UK title: Nobody's Horse) (2009)
Private Life (2010)


Short story collections
The Age of Grief (1987)


Non-fiction books
Charles Dickens (2003)
A Year at the Races: Reflections on Horses Humans Love Money and Luck (2004)
Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005)
The Man Who Invented The Computer (2010)


Television
"In Search of Crimes Past" episode of Homicide: Life on the Street (teleplay; story by Henry Bromell & Julie Martin) (1995).

Jane Smiley (born September 26 1949) is an American novelist.