294 Quotes by Ann Patchett

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.

Just because things hadn’t gone the way I had planned didn’t necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

Home, bed, sleep, mother – who knew more beautiful words than these?

If you’re trying to find out what’s coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.

Whenever I saw her, I felt like I had been living in another country, doing moderately well in another language, and then she showed up speaking English and suddenly I could speak with all the complexity and nuance that I hadn’t realized was gone. With Lucy I was a native speaker.

I can’t write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

Writing is a job, a talent, but it’s also the place to go in your head. It is the imaginary friend you drink your tea with in the afternoon.

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.

Society was nothing but a long, dull dinner party conversation in which one was forced to speak to one’s partner on both the left and the right.