77 Quotes by Ann Hood

It mattered most to me then because of where I was in my life. So in a way, there isn't just one book that matters most, there might be several, or even a dozen.

When you read a book, and who you are when you read it, makes it matter or not.

Could a writer understand how her book had saved someone long ago, when the world was a fragile, scary place and the people she loved weren't in it anymore? Could a writer understand that her book had mattered more than anything?

Even now, there are still days so beautiful, I almost believe in God.

No mother should lose her child.

This was how to help a family who has just lost their child. Wash the clothes, make soup. Don't ask them what they need, bring them what they need. Keep them warm. Listen to them rant, and cry, and tell their story over and over.

Maybe knitting is like writing a story-- an act of discovery. But that seems unlikely, given the very precise directions.

...I felt joined to all the men and women across cultures down through the ages who'd done something useful with their hands, who'd made essential things from whatever was in front of them.

Truman Capote said that he learned how to write a story not from reading but from sitting on his aunts' front porch in Alabama and listening to them tell stories. This was my earliest education in the art of storytelling too.