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That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.
Ann Patchett
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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
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More quotes by Ann Patchett
There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.
Ann Patchett
That's important to me, to recommend books.
Ann Patchett
No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.
Ann Patchett
Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano.
Ann Patchett
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
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
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
There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.
Ann Patchett
Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?
Ann Patchett
It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.
Ann Patchett
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
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
Everybody believes in chance.
Ann Patchett
Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.
Ann Patchett
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
Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.
Ann Patchett
Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.
Ann Patchett
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
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
If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.
Ann Patchett