294 Quotes by Ann Patchett

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.

Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

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

Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.

There are, of course, people who didn't create the trouble they're in, but lots of them do.

He doesn’t know to want for more because nothing in his life has been as much as this...on that night he thinks that no one has ever had so much and only later will he know he should have asked for more.

It's always better to have too much to read than not enough.

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.

Nonfiction is easy and fiction is hard.