Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Ideas
Characters
Groceries
Writing
Wind
Asleep
Think
Coming
Store
Thinking
Idea
Stores
Fall
Falling
Night
Pursue
Character
Driving
Back
Keeps
Grocery

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
When I am emperor, I will abolish private education. Private schools, private college. All of these parents with money and energy and the drive for bake sales and a desire to leave their vast fortunes to education - everybody would have to be eating out of the same educational pot.
Ann Patchett
Image
Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.
Ann Patchett
Image
Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?
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
Fiction is always really a labor.
Ann Patchett
Image
I read books I hate all the time, and I don't mention them or talk about them.
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
Image
The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, You have no need for sight. Listen.
Ann Patchett
Image
I love telling people what to read. It's my favorite thing in the world, to buy books and force books on people, take bad books away from people, give them better books.
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 will go and speak at rotary clubs. I will go and speak at schools. I'm so much in the community, but in a way that I love. It's been such a positive thing.
Ann Patchett
Image
When well told, a story captured the subtle movement of change. If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.
Ann Patchett
Image
It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.
Ann Patchett
Image
I am sure every writer has this and probably every newscaster, that people are always coming up to me and saying, my daughter wants to do what you do, my godson, my tennis partner.
Ann Patchett
Image
I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.
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
I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.
Ann Patchett
Image
I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.
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
People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.
Ann Patchett