Ann Patchett Quotes

All four of the boys were frozen, mesmerized, the weirdest chill washing over their skin while they watched this miraculous growing animal devouring the earth in every direction, every direction where there was grass and not bothering them at all on the pavement. The fire came as high as their waists, their chests, gorgeous beyond anything they'd seen, the rippling orange sheets hanging in the air like a desert mirage, like something that was there and not there. Black smoke curled above the flames, announcing to the neighborhood this very private thing that Albie had made. Fire! Fire! they'd be calling in the industrial park, even though it was already starting to die out around the edges. The fire needed so much. The boys could see it looking for more grass, anything to keep itself alive. It would have happily burned them up if it meant going for another minute. ~ Ann Patchett

Far outside the city the tree frogs were calling her, and the deep, rhythmic pulse of their voices set the blood flow to her heart. ~ Ann Patchett

Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores. ~ Ann Patchett

Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves. ~ Ann Patchett

The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, You have no need for sight. Listen. ~ Ann Patchett

One boy took a peppermint from a woman's satin evening clutch but first held it up discreetly for consent. She moved her head down and back, just a quarter of an inch, and he smiled and slipped off the cellophane. ~ Ann Patchett

It was her plan to outrun all of that, and somewhere in that running she had started to fly. She no longer felt like touching all the dirt and the muck she had so patiently submitted herself to so that people would think she was a very nice girl. She was not such a very nice girl. Nobody who was very, very nice would ever work this hard to take something they wanted only for themselves. ~ Ann Patchett

Is there nothing the prodigiously talented Ann Patchett can't do? She's channeled the world of opera, Boston politics, magic, unwed motherhood, and race relations, creating scenarios so indelible, you swear they are right outside your door. ~ Caroline Leavitt

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

Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame ~ Ann Patchett

When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view.'
'Americans havea bad habbit of thinking like Americans,' Roxane said kindly. ~ Ann Patchett

Eating as a simple means of ending hunger is one of the great liberties of being alone, like going to the movies by yourself in the afternoon or, back in those golden days of youth, having a cigarette in the bathtub. It is a pleasure to not have to take anyone else's tastes into account or explain why I like to drink my grapefruit juice out of the carton. Eating, after all, is a matter of taste, and taste cannot always be good taste. The very thought of maintaining high standards meal after meal is exhausting. It discounts all the peanut butter that is available in the world. ~ Ann Patchett

It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper. ~ Ann Patchett

It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how. ~ Ann Patchett

But together they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a brave whole. ~ Ann Patchett

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something. ~ Ann Patchett

I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list. ~ Ann Patchett

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. ~ Ann Patchett

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. - Ann Patchett, from the essay The Sense of an Ending ~ Megan Hart

I think that she is everything I have ever loved about our religion distilled down to fit into one person, everything about the faith that is both selfless and responsible. ~ Ann Patchett

Back then I didn't know you weren't supposed to give your whole heart to a baby that isn't yours. ~ Ann Patchett

Is it possible that anxiety ends at the moment when we no longer have time for it? ~ Ann Patchett

His own children were not members of the Clemson incoming freshman class, but two of his nieces and a nephew were. On the news, he outlined his problems with the summer-reading committee's selection. The book talks in graphic terms about pornography, about fetish, about masturbation, about multiple sex partners . . . The book contains a very extensive list of over-the-top sexual and antireligious references. The explicit message that this sends to students is that they are encouraged to find themselves sexually. ~ Ann Patchett

A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. ~ Ann Patchett

There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself. ~ Ann Patchett

Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job. ~ Ann Patchett

In the future, he will try to say her name enough, but he never can. ~ Ann Patchett

We both had our first kiss from the same boy in college (a sainted and tender soul who must have made it his business to kiss the girls who would have otherwise graduated unkissed). ~ Ann Patchett

Minnesota! It smelled like raspberries and sunlight and tender grass. It was summer and everything was more beautiful than any picture she had carried with her ... There had never been a place in the world as beautiful as Minnesota. ~ Ann Patchett

The christening party took a turn when Albert Cousins arrived with gin. ~ Ann Patchett

Isn't often the past picks up the phone and calls, affording the opportunity to reconsider personal history in a way that could have saved countless thousands of dollars in therapy had I been inclined to go. I ~ Ann Patchett

People die, terrible things happen. I know this now. You can't pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go. ~ Ann Patchett

Further than five minutes ahead. But since I knew at the end of the week I couldn't go back, I called a lawyer. ~ Ann Patchett

He couldn't help but like the look of children when they were sleeping. "Is ~ Ann Patchett

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

The fact is, I love to feed other people. I love their pleasure, their comfort, their delight in being cared for. Cooking gives me the means to make other people feel better, which in a very simple equation makes me feel better. I believe that food can be a profound means of communication, allowing me to express myself in a way that seems much deeper and more sincere than words. My Gruyere cheese puffs straight from the oven say 'I'm glad you're here. Sit down, relax. I'll look after everything.'
- Ann Patchett, Dinner For One, Please, James ~ Jenni Ferrari-Adler

Neither Doyle nor Sullivan had ever been to visit him at Regina Cleri, and Tip had only come one time and then left after five minutes. To Father Sullivan it was as if this part of his family, these people whom he loved, had all packed up and gone to Africa. ~ Ann Patchett

A daughter was a battle between fathers and boys in which the fathers fought valiantly and always lost. ~ Ann Patchett

Eternal rest, grant unto her, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon her. May her soul and all the souls of the faithfully departed rest in peace. Amen. ~ Ann Patchett

For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man. ~ Ann Patchett

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice. ~ Ann Patchett

Your guilt's got nothing on my guilt," Franny said. "Your guilt isn't even in the ballpark. ~ Ann Patchett

I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write? ~ Ann Patchett

Zen- Dojo Tozan was not in Sarnen or Thu but somewhere between the two, not in a village but in the tall grass and blue flowers. ~ Ann Patchett

Oh, my love,' she said. 'What do the only children do?'

'We'll never have to know. ~ Ann Patchett

I was young and filled with a degree of self-interest that could rightly be called selfishness. Nothing was more important than the stories we wrote, ~ Ann Patchett

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

The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living. ~ Ann Patchett

It's not more complicated than that," she said. "That's all there is: Does he make you better and do you make him better?" Look ~ Ann Patchett

Other CEOs were shown fly-fishing in Scottish rivers or piloting their own Learjets into Helsinki. Mr. Hosokawa was photographed at home in the leather chair he sat in when he listened, a Nansei EX-12 stereo system behind him. ~ Ann Patchett

It was soaring, that voice, warm and complicated, utterly fearless. ~ Ann Patchett

We had stepped into the river that takes you forward. ~ Ann Patchett

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. It's a plague. It's like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and someone just keep pulling it and pulling it.
STATE OF WONDER ~ Ann Patchett

The biggest lie in business is that it takes money to make money, remember that. You gotta be smart, have a plan, pay attention to what's going on around you. None of that costs a dime. ~ Ann Patchett

Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone. ~ Ann Patchett

People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage to forget about it quickly. I want to learn to love people like this, the way I love my dog, with pride and enthusiasm and a complete amnesia for faults. In short, to love others the way my dog loves me. ~ Ann Patchett

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss. ~ Ann Patchett

No one tells the truth to people they don't actually know, and if they do it is a horrible trait. Everyone wants something smaller, something neater than the truth. ~ Ann Patchett

my mother knew that no woman thought she was beautiful, or beautiful enough, or beautiful in the right way. ~ Ann Patchett

Had I known anything about the elegance of quitting at the right time, I would have made so many people, starting with myself and Dennis, so much happier. ~ Ann Patchett

But it is never about who has given what. That is not the way of gifts. This is not a business we are conducting. ~ Ann Patchett

The process of putting the thing you value most in the world out for the assessment of strangers is a confidence-shaking business even in the best of times. But in Lucy's circumstances it was sheer heroism, a real sign of her devotion to her art. She was, in a sense, sitting at a craps table with her last stack of chips, trying again and again to hit it big. ~ Ann Patchett

You may have heard the news that the independent bookstore is dead, that books are dead, that maybe even reading is dead - to which I say, Pull up a chair, friend. I have a story to tell. ~ Ann Patchett

Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on. ~ Ann Patchett

When Lucy believed that there were actually things in the world that were worse than what had happened to her, she could pull herself up on this knowledge like a rope. When she lost sight of it, she sank. ~ Ann Patchett

You are always someones favorite unfolding story ~ Ann Patchett

We could sit here all night talking about cancer. I'm just telling you it's unsettling. There are thousands of ways your body can go off the rails for no reason whatsoever and chances are you won't know about any of it until it's too late. ~ Ann Patchett

If you grow corn or trade in pigs or write poetry then you go to Iowa City." "That's why I haven't been. ~ Ann Patchett

They were lined with the pelts of cast-off teddy bears. There was no vanity in winter. ~ Ann Patchett

But part of what I love about both novels and dogs is that they are so beautifully oblivious to economic concerns. We serve them, and in return they thrive. ~ Ann Patchett

Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand. ~ Ann Patchett

But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of what a perfect relationship would look like. Love, in her imagination, was so dazzling, so tender and unconditional, that anything human seemed impossibly thin by comparison. Lucy's loneliness was breathtaking in its enormity ... she was trapped in a room full of mirrors, and every direction she looked in she saw herself, her face, her loneliness. She couldn't see that no one else was perfect either, and that so much of love was the work of it. She had worked on everything else. Love would have to be charmed. ~ Ann Patchett

Stories are based in conflict, and when the conflict is resolved the story ends. That's because for the most part happiness is amorphous, wordless, and largely uninteresting. ~ Ann Patchett

She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room. ~ Ann Patchett

She did have friends, she had just made a decision to stay home and experiment with dying. ~ Ann Patchett

and washing it off in the sink. "Finish up your lunch." "We're starting now?" "Good a ~ Ann Patchett

I do not remember our love unfolding, that we got to know one another and in time became friends. I only remember that she came through the door and it was there, huge and permanent and first. ~ Ann Patchett

He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person. ~ Ann Patchett

Everyone knows everything eventually. ~ Ann Patchett

Gen stopped and talked to Simon Thaibault, who was reading One Hundred Years Of Solutide in Spanish.
'This will take me forever,' Thaibault said to Gen in French, 'Maybe a hundred years. At least I know I have the time.'
'Who knew that being kidnapped was so much like attending university?' Gen said. ~ Ann Patchett

I never learned how to take the beautiful thing in my imagination and put it on paper without feeling I killed it along the way. I did, however, learn how to weather the death, and I learned how to forgive myself for it. ~ Ann Patchett

The madder Maeve got, the more thoughtful she became. In this way she reminded me of our father -- every word she spoke came individually wrapped. ~ Ann Patchett

From his endless work had come a great industry, great personal gain, but happiness? It was a word he would have puzzled over, unable to understand it's importance even while it's meaning was evident. ~ Ann Patchett

If someone were to have pressed a sheet of glass down over the top of Alliance, Nebraska, in winter, it would have resembled an ant farm. Everything was a tunnel eaten neatly, carefully into the snow. The tunnel of the streets branching into the narrower tunnels of driveways and carved-out sidewalks. The snow banked over cars, lawn furniture, porches, like frozen animal carcasses stored for future need. ~ Ann Patchett

Some children were lucky enough to have their Potter novels banned by witch-hunting school boards and micromanaging ministers. Is there any greater job than a book you're not allowed to read, a book you could go to hell for reading? ~ Ann Patchett

If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say. ~ Ann Patchett

If Kumar had his way they would leave for Fiji every year just before Thanksgiving and not return until the New Year rang in and the decorations came down. They would swim with the fishes and lie on the beach eating papaya. On the years they were tired of Fiji they would go to Bali or Sydney or any sunny, sandy place whose name contained an equal number of consonants and vowels. ~ Ann Patchett

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

Maybe it's working because I'm an author, and maybe it's working because Karen works like life depends on this bookstore, or because we have a particularly brilliant staff, or because Nashville is a city that is particularly sympathetic to all things independent. Maybe we just got lucky. But my luck has made me believe that changing the course of the corporate world is possible. Amazon doesn't get to make all the decisions; the people can make them by how and where they spend their money. If what a bookstore offers matters to you, then shop at a bookstore. If you feel that the experience of reading a book is valuable, then read the book. This is how we change the world: we grab hold of it. We change ourselves. ~ Ann Patchett

One must not be shy where language is concerned. ~ Ann Patchett

Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement. ~ Ann Patchett

Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
~ Ann Patchett

Instead of following her original plan to have an abortion, she and Fode had decided to conduct a radical social experiment they called Having the Baby, and because of the outcome of that experiment, she had dropped out of school. ~ Ann Patchett

Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing. The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way. ~ Ann Patchett

It was already in place, without him seeing any of it, the web was spun and snug around the house, and while his first impulse, the natural impulse, was to press ahead anyway and see if he might beat out the odds, clear logic held him. ~ Ann Patchett

The early years he had spent building Nansei were like a hurricane in his memory, a huge, overbearing wind into which every loose thing was sucked. ~ Ann Patchett

My mother used to say the more lost you are, the later it got, the more you had invested in not being lost. That's why people who are lost so often keep heading in the same direction. ~ Ann Patchett

They look into the mirror and all they can see is a collection of flaws, ~ Ann Patchett

That's why you can eat cheesecake,' she said, and sighed. 'Because you don't. That's the way it works. ~ Ann Patchett

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. ~ Ann Patchett