Quote

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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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Keep
Character
Way
Flooded
Love
Cast
Life
Casts
People
Straight
Large
Characters

More quotes by 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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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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Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.
Ann Patchett
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There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.
Ann Patchett
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Even though I didn't know I was applying for the job, I have somehow become the spokesperson for independent book stores.
Ann Patchett
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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.
Ann Patchett
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If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.
Ann Patchett
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But we cannot unbraid the story of another person’s life and take out all the parts that don’t suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.
Ann Patchett
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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
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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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It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.
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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You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.
Ann Patchett
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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
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I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.
Ann Patchett
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I always feel it is a shortcoming of mine as a reader and as a writer that I frankly need to like somebody.
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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That's important to me, to recommend books.
Ann Patchett
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For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.
Ann Patchett
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She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.
Ann Patchett