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I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
People
Selling
Become
Book
Need
Needs
Writing
Think
Thinking
Consumed

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.
Ann Patchett
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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
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The Swedish he knew was mostly from Bergman films. He had learned it as a college student, matching the subtitles to the sounds. In Swedish, he could only converse on the darkest of subjects.
Ann Patchett
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Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.
Ann Patchett
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No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do
Ann Patchett
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When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.
Ann Patchett
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Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.
Ann Patchett
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I should figure out why I'm so much more interested in doing something that I think is really hard. But, somehow, the thing that is hard for me feels more noble.
Ann Patchett
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Time has a funny way of collapsing when you go back to a place you once loved. You find yourself thinking, I was kissed in that building, I climbed up that tree.
Ann Patchett
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She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.
Ann Patchett
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I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.
Ann Patchett
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People always say, Can writing be taught? I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.
Ann Patchett
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I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.
Ann Patchett
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Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Ann Patchett
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There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.
Ann Patchett
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I don't really do anything with the Internet except check my email. I have a much higher opinion of humanity because of that.
Ann Patchett
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It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.
Ann Patchett
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I am a totally public person.
Ann Patchett
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In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.
Ann Patchett
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If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.
Ann Patchett