Ann Patchett quotes - page 4

To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall .... [p.218 ff.]. (Ann Patchett)
It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.
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
No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.
Ann Patchett
But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.
Ann Patchett
He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!
Ann Patchett
I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.
Ann Patchett
Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward.
Ann Patchett
He doesn't know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.
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
That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all. (Ann Patchett)
It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.
Ann Patchett
Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all.
Ann Patchett
You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.
Ann Patchett
The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.
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
If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.
Ann Patchett
If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.
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
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
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)
The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.
Ann Patchett
She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.
Ann Patchett
Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.
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