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No one tells the truth to people they don't actually know, and if they do it is a horrible trait. Everyone wants something smaller, something neater than the truth.
Ann Patchett
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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
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LA
California
Truth
Trait
Something
Traits
People
Smaller
Tells
Horrible
Wants
Actually
Everyone
More quotes by Ann Patchett
You can’t pick up and leave everything behind because there is too much sadness in the world and not enough places to go.
Ann Patchett
I am sure every writer has this and probably every newscaster, that people are always coming up to me and saying, my daughter wants to do what you do, my godson, my tennis partner.
Ann Patchett
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
But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.
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
When I am emperor, I will abolish private education. Private schools, private college. All of these parents with money and energy and the drive for bake sales and a desire to leave their vast fortunes to education - everybody would have to be eating out of the same educational pot.
Ann Patchett
Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.
Ann Patchett
shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us
Ann Patchett
You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.
Ann Patchett
If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, No. That is not where I want to go.
Ann Patchett
The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.
Ann Patchett
Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.
Ann Patchett
The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.
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
Sometimes if there's a book you really want to read, you have to write it yourself.
Ann Patchett
It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.
Ann Patchett
I know that there are people out there who believe we should get rid of all guns.
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
Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.
Ann Patchett
Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.
Ann Patchett
