Quote

He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.

Ann Patchett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Patchett
Age: 60
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Follow
Inside
Needed
Used
Find
Compass

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
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
Image
When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.
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
I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.
Ann Patchett
Image
It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.
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 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 read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.
Ann Patchett
Image
The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August.
Ann Patchett
Image
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.
Ann Patchett
Image
It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.
Ann Patchett
Image
I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
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
Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all.
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
Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.
Ann Patchett
Image
When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.
Ann Patchett