Quote

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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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Fiction
Possibly
Experience
Inside
Skin
Character
Imagination
Skins
Book
Alone
Mets
Feel
Reading
Skills
Feels
Ability
Creativity
Develops
Giving
Lives
Couldn
Puts
Never
Gives
Empathy
People
Living

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.
Ann Patchett
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My novels are very much the same, as I think many people's novels are. No matter how hard I try to do otherwise, the books always wind up being a group of strangers are thrown together by circumstance and form a society.
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I will go and speak at rotary clubs. I will go and speak at schools. I'm so much in the community, but in a way that I love. It's been such a positive thing.
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Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.
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You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.
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The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.
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If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write.
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You throw a person in the river and then make a spectacle of jumping in to save them.
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For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.
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Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.
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When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
Ann Patchett
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Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.
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Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.
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Learn to write by 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.
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Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores.
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Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.
Ann Patchett
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I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.
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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It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.
Ann Patchett