Quotes by Ann Patchett

About Ann Patchett:

Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the Orange Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2002 for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include Run, The Patron Saint of Liars, Taft, State of Wonder, and The Magician's Assistant, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and received the Nashville Banner Tennessee Writer of the Year Award in 1994.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Maybe everyone does have a novel in them, perhaps even a great one. I don't believe it, but for the purposes of this argument, let's say it's so. Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imag...

Ann Patchett

It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools a...

Ann Patchett

What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God you're ever going to get. All the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide wh...

Ann Patchett

The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.

Ann Patchett

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.

Ann Patchett

The journey from the head to the hand is perilous and lined with bodies. It is the road on which nearly everyone who wants to write—and many of the people who do write—get lost.

Ann Patchett

Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not ...

Ann Patchett

If want a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else.

Ann Patchett

He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.

Ann Patchett

The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.

Ann Patchett

But it is never about who has given what. That is not the way of gifts. This is not a business we are conducting.

Ann Patchett

He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that ...

Ann Patchett

He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.

Ann Patchett

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air....

Ann Patchett

Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement.

Ann Patchett

As if music were a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.

Ann Patchett

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

Ann Patchett

Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.

Ann Patchett

Gen was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged.

Ann Patchett

They lived their lives only for the hour that lay ahead of them.

Ann Patchett

...as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice.

Ann Patchett

Author Bio

  • NameAnn Patchett
  • DescriptionNovelist, memoirist
  • BornDecember 2, 1963
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Novelist
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship