Quote

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

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
People
Keeping
Safe
Story
Tell

More quotes by Ann Patchett

Image
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
Image
Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft.
Ann Patchett
Image
There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.
Ann Patchett
Image
I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.
Ann Patchett
Image
When you get divorced and remarried, nobody gets discarded. Everybody is still there. Even if their storyline is not directly yours.
Ann Patchett
Image
You can't say, I'm too busy writing to be political. You are one person.
Ann Patchett
Image
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.
Ann Patchett
Image
That's important to me, to recommend books.
Ann Patchett
Image
Seeing images of violence - it's always about how somebody's going to kill you.
Ann Patchett
Image
I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.
Ann Patchett
Image
I am the person who is appropriating stories that are not mine and turning them into a book.
Ann Patchett
Image
I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.
Ann Patchett
Image
We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
Ann Patchett
Image
If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.
Ann Patchett
Image
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
Image
I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.
Ann Patchett
Image
Because of her singing they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith.
Ann Patchett
Image
I am a totally public person.
Ann Patchett