Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“We shared ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Updike and Bellow and Roth were my three favorite writers when I was young and throughout my life. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“...writing stories was always a bit like falling in love with a stranger and running off to Marrakech for a long weekend.… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I've been writing the same book my whole life - that you're in one family, and all of a sudden, you're in… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“We all have ideas, sometimes good ones, not to mention the gift of emotional turmoil that every childhood provides.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“An essential element of being a writer is learning whom to listen to and whom to ignore where your work is concerned.… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“She told the woman to go to one of the online agent sites that list agents who are looking for new clients,… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing. The secret is finding the balance between going out… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives.… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“a woman raised her hand and said that her minister had told the congregation that they should never read novels with omniscient… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“I wrote the last sentence of The Patron Saint of Liars in early April and stumbled out of my apartment and into… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“...fiction writing is like duck hunting. You go to the right place at the right time with the right dog. You get… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“ What is the trick for writing dialogue? That you are not running a wiretap for the FBI. I used to have… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“Without worry to protect me, every thought that came into my mind received real attention.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“I wrote the last sentence of The Patron Saint of Liars in early April and stumbled out of my apartment and into the beautiful… — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share
If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write. — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“She didn't know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much… — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“When you think of love you think as an American. You must think like a Russian. It is a more expansive view.' 'Americans havea… — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“...Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems.… — Ann Patchett Copy Share
“Clearly he needed a father, but some other father, any other father, would have been preferable.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share
