Ann Patchett quotes - page 2

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong. (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
There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.
Ann Patchett
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and 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.
Ann Patchett
You are always someones favorite unfolding story.
Ann Patchett
Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.
Ann Patchett
Sometimes not having any idea where we're going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.
Ann Patchett
There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.
Ann Patchett
It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.
Ann Patchett
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.
Ann Patchett
I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing. (Ann Patchett)
I am not mature enough as a reader to enjoy a book in which I hate all the people.
Ann Patchett
The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.
Ann Patchett
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.
Ann Patchett
I will write my way into another life.
Ann Patchett
If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.
Ann Patchett
Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.
Ann Patchett
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.
Ann Patchett
Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.
Ann Patchett
It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.
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)
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
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.
Ann Patchett
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.
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 disappointment them, or, if they do, the owners manages 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