294 Quotes by Ann Patchett

I always believed her, if for no other reason than I didn't know how not to.

We had invented time, and we could not kill it fast enough. After dinner, dancing, and baths, we read, wrote our poems and stories, brushed our teeth, and tumbled into bed, only to find the next day was exactly the same. We had not moved one inch forward in the night. It was like prison, not in the punishment but in the vast sameness of the days. We were impossibly rich in time, and we lavished the excess on one another.

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.

... the story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney.

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. It's a plague. It's like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and someone just keep pulling it and pulling it."STATE OF WONDER

If Kumar had his way they would leave for Fiji every year just before Thanksgiving and not return until the New Year rang in and the decorations came down. They would swim with the fishes and lie on the beach eating papaya. On the years they were tired of Fiji they would go to Bali or Sydney or any sunny, sandy place whose name contained an equal number of consonants and vowels.

It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.

He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person. Never had he received such kindness. Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spend the rest of their lives remembering.

It was not as natural as it appeared. It was more like milking a cow, easy as long as someone else was doing it.