66 Quotes by Patricia Hampl

Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.

It’s always a thrilling risk to say exactly what you mean, to express exactly what you see.

We must set out, often without a destination, with only the instinct to search as a direction. Literature and religion are predicated on the notion of journey, movement – pilgrimage it’s called in religion, plot in literature.

Planes are my foxhole. I’m always on my knees in them.

I come from people who have always been polite enough to feel that nothing has ever happened to them.

Poverty didn’t necessarily engender an envy of wealth; sometimes it might beget a passion for decency.

We have chosen a problematic name for ourselves: we are no longer souls as we once were, not even citizens; we’re all consumers now, grasping all the stuff every which way.

Faith in our time can seem like signing on the dotted line of a prefab doctrine composed of absurdities.

The artist’s work, it is sometimes said, is to celebrate. But really that is not so; it is to express wonder. And something terrible resides at the heart of wonder. Celebration is social, amenable. Wonder has a chaotic splendor.