“Sometimes you don’t realize what’s lacking in life until you find it.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“She understood in life that a person was only allowed one trip down to hell.” — 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
In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant. — 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
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
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'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
“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
“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
The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky,… — 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
“... 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
“I could have had one life but insteads I had another because of this book my grandmother protected. What a miracle is… — 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
He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from… — 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. You can't… — 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
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
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
“It would be incorrect in every sense to say that so near the end of his life he had lost his faith,… — 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
“I have just reread The Age of Innocence. Poor Countess Olenska, so much more alive than everyone in New York. She was… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“He had lived his life as a good father but now Oscar Mendoza saw again his life as a boy. A daughter… — 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
“I may at times forget the details of my life but I remember the stories I read.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“If want a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else.” — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“The quality of a life is defined not by its length, but by its depth, its actions and achievements. It is defined… — 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
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
