Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability… — 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
Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere. — 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
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
If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said,… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Had she done something with her life no one would be asking her to make them cappuccino, and had she done something… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Life, Teresa knew by now, was a series of losses. It was other things too, better things, but the losses were as… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“... the story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“But Lucy had been alone too much of her life, and in her loneliness she had constructed a vision of what a… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you… — 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
Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“This was the pleasure of a long life: the way some things worked themselves out.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Maybe that was the definition of life everlasting: the belief that the next generation would carry your work forward. — 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
“If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“The question is whether or not you choose to disturb the world around you, or if you choose to let it go… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“For twenty-two years Sabine had told her stories to one person, so that the action and the telling had become inseparable. What… — 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
“Without worry to protect me, every thought that came into my mind received real attention.” — 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 the beautiful… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“In the future, he will try to say her name enough, but he never can.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.” — 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 write. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
