Quote

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
Writer
LA
California
Truth
Trait
Something
Traits
People
Smaller
Tells
Horrible
Wants
Actually
Everyone

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.
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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.
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Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
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There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.
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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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If you want to write and can't figure out how to do it, try this: Pick an amount of time to sit at your desk every day. Start with twenty minutes, say, and work up as quickly as possible to as much time as you can spare. Do you really want to write? Sit for two hours a day.
Ann Patchett
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She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.
Ann Patchett
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You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.
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I am a totally public person.
Ann Patchett
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If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.
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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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I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.
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Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.
Ann Patchett
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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
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No one should have to go back to the place where she had once been a girl.
Ann Patchett
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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.
Ann Patchett
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I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.
Ann Patchett
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I will write my way into another life.
Ann Patchett
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Everyone knows everything eventually.
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