Quote

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

Ann Patchett

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Attributes
Require
Magic
Playing
Inspiration
Understand
Cello
Writing
Work
Attribute

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
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
Image
If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.
Ann Patchett
Image
I know where I'm going. And if I don't know where I'm going, I don't tend to get anywhere.
Ann Patchett
Image
That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me. The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night or when I'm driving to the grocery store are the one's I wind up writing about.
Ann Patchett
Image
One must not be shy where language is concerned.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.
Ann Patchett
Image
The thing you can count on in life is that Tennessee will always be scorching hot in August.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.
Ann Patchett
Image
The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.
Ann Patchett
Image
I know that there are people out there who believe we should get rid of all guns.
Ann Patchett
Image
The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.
Ann Patchett
Image
Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.
Ann Patchett