Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Person
Quiet
Feels
Seem
Life
Wants
Complain
Freedom
Tends
Else
Complaining
Seems
Wanting
Anything
Begins
Persons
Secure

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.
Ann Patchett
Image
No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.
Ann Patchett
Image
Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one's partner on both the left and the right.
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
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
Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores.
Ann Patchett
Image
I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.
Ann Patchett
Image
Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
Ann Patchett
Image
Everybody believes in chance.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
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
I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.
Ann Patchett
Image
I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.
Ann Patchett
Image
We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.
Ann Patchett
Image
I really do think that our subconscious gets corrupted with fear, and fear is how news media - all media - makes us [watch] long enough to get to the Tide commercial. That's all it's about. Generating fear so that we can buy the proper laundry detergent.
Ann Patchett
Image
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.
Ann Patchett
Image
Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.
Ann Patchett