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If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
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LA
California
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More quotes by Ann Patchett

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Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.
Ann Patchett
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reading is a private act, private even from the person who wrote the book. Once the novel is out there, the author is beside the point. The reader and the book have their own relationship now, and should be left alone to work things out for themselves.
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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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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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.
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
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I certainly have written a lot about police in my life, and it's not only something that I know about, but always something that interests me.
Ann Patchett
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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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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
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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
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Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn't realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.
Ann Patchett
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I'm very comfortable writing.
Ann Patchett
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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
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Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.
Ann Patchett
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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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I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.
Ann Patchett
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If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.
Ann Patchett
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That's one of the many things about having the bookstore that I adore. I can walk into the store and say to somebody, I'm glad you're reading this book or I'm glad you're getting this book or Don't get that book. I read that book and hated that book. Let's get you this book instead.
Ann Patchett
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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
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My writing process has changed because it's harder to find uninterrupted time.
Ann Patchett