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When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

Ann Patchett

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Ann Patchett
Age: 61
Born: 1963
Born: November 2
Author
Novelist
Writer
LA
California
Nonfiction
Wrote
Personal
Stuff
Best
Work
Really

More quotes by 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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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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It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.
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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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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I think the best vacation is the one that relieves me of my own life for a while and then makes me long for it again.
Ann Patchett
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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
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I don't really do anything with the Internet except check my email. I have a much higher opinion of humanity because of that.
Ann Patchett
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Because of her singing they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith.
Ann Patchett
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It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.
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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It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.
Ann Patchett
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The hardest piece of nonfiction I ever wrote isn't anywhere close to the easiest piece of fiction I never wrote.
Ann Patchett
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I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.
Ann Patchett
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I will write my way into another life.
Ann Patchett
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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
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Fiction is always really a labor.
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 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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Some people need a huge amount of attention, and they are worthy of that attention, and they're still exhausting.
Ann Patchett