Quote

The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Ann Patchett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Life
Moving
Putting
Process
Lucky
Keep
Single
Around
Alive
Together
Secret
Ideas
Lasts
Every
Last
Adding
Things
Voice
Voices

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.
Ann Patchett
Image
If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.
Ann Patchett
Image
I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.
Ann Patchett
Image
I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.
Ann Patchett
Image
For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.
Ann Patchett
Image
It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.
Ann Patchett
Image
The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making art you also have to make a living.
Ann Patchett
Image
He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!
Ann Patchett
Image
Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.
Ann Patchett
Image
Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.
Ann Patchett
Image
I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.
Ann Patchett
Image
I know that there are people out there who believe we should get rid of all guns.
Ann Patchett
Image
When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.
Ann Patchett
Image
People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.
Ann Patchett
Image
It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.
Ann Patchett
Image
Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
Ann Patchett