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Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.

Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
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LA
California
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Ten
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Criticism
Great
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Crushing
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Crush

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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If I had problems, I kept them to myself. I didn't make a scene.
Ann Patchett
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I love a large cast of characters. That's the way life is: it's flooded with people and we keep them all straight.
Ann Patchett
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Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.
Ann Patchett
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It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.
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Learn to write by writing
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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.
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The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.
Ann Patchett
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Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
Ann Patchett
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I think, if you want to grow a novelist, for that person to have a lot of boring time trying to entertain themselves is very important.
Ann Patchett
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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.
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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.
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I am not mature enough as a reader to enjoy a book in which I hate all the people.
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I believe, in my better moments, that there is a plan and things go not the way we want them to but the way they should.
Ann Patchett
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It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.
Ann Patchett
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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
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Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.
Ann Patchett
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Seeing images of violence - it's always about how somebody's going to kill you.
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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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.
Ann Patchett
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You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend.
Ann Patchett