Ann Patchett Quotes, Thoughts and images

Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.

The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August.

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

The love between humans is the thing that nails us to the earth.

One must not be shy where language is concerned.

It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.

The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

I will write my way into another life.

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

I am not mature enough as a reader to enjoy a book in which I hate all the people.

If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.

Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

Everyone knows everything eventually.

You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.

You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.

There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.

There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.