Quote

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

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Happened
Clear
Getting
Point
Learn
Loss
Truth
Thousand
Used
Ways
Way
Small

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.
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Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.
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In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.
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The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.
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You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.
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Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.
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Learn to write by writing
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You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.
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Because of her singing they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith.
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We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.
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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.
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I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.
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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
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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
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You should not have assault rifles in your home.
Ann Patchett
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When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
Ann Patchett
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Carmen prayed hard. She prayed while standing near the priest in hopes it would give her request extra credibility. What she prayed for was nothing. She prayed that God would look on them and see the beauty of their existence and leave them alone.
Ann Patchett
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Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.
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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I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.
Ann Patchett