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I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Write
Book
Writing
Think
Finish
Thinking
Sell
Sells
Audience
Whether

More quotes by Ann Patchett

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The love between humans is the thing that nails us to the earth.
Ann Patchett
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One must not be shy where language is concerned.
Ann Patchett
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Staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.
Ann Patchett
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No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do
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
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Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings.
Ann Patchett
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Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
Ann Patchett
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Show kindness whenever possible. Show it to the people in front of you, the people coming up behind you, and the people with whom you are running neck and neck. It will vastly improve the quality of your own life, the lives of others, and the state of the world.
Ann Patchett
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People always say, Can writing be taught? I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.
Ann Patchett
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The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.
Ann Patchett
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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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You can't always trust what you think, what you know ... but you can always trust your nature.
Ann Patchett
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I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.
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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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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Guns are dangerous and damaging even when no one gets shot. They really do loom.
Ann Patchett
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There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.
Ann Patchett
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But these last months had turned him around and now Gen saw there could be as much virtue in letting go of what you knew as there had ever been in gathering new information. He worked as hard at forgetting as he had ever worked to learn.
Ann Patchett
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Using your imagination is the one time in life you can really go anywhere.
Ann Patchett
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I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.
Ann Patchett