I decided to make my living as a magazine writer. And I found that it was really easy and fun. — 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
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
I am sure every writer has this and probably every newscaster, that people are always coming up to me and saying, my… — 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 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 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
“We all have ideas, sometimes good ones, not to mention the gift of emotional turmoil that every childhood provides.” — 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
“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
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
“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
If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to… — 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
“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
I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write. — 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 craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
You learn every time you write a book, and then you take that new knowledge and experience into the next book. Hopefully,… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
Writing is an amazing place to hide, to go into the rabbit hole, and pull the trap door down over your head. — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
“Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art you must master the craft. If you… — Ann Patchett Copy Share Image
If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really,… — 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
