294 Quotes by Ann Patchett

Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world

...was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women...

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.

He wondered now if everyone had a private life. He wondered if his wife had one. It was possible that all those years he had been alone, never knowing that a complete world existed and no one spoke of it.

Some children were lucky enough to have their Potter novels banned by witch-hunting school boards and micromanaging ministers. Is there any greater job than a book you're not allowed to read, a book you could go to hell for reading?

Girls and their dates still got dressed to go to the Apollo for amateur night but by 1968 pretty much every representation of hope in the country had been put up against a wall and shot.

Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.

It was all in my head and now all I had to do was figure out a way to get it down on paper.

That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.