Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.

Ann Patchett

Categorized in : Book Reading Live Life

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.

Ann Patchett

writing tea jobs

Never be so focused on what you're looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.

Ann Patchett

focus goal sight

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

Ann Patchett

grief believe book

The idea I pursue is the one that keeps coming back to me. The characters I think about as I'm falling asleep at night or when I'm driving to the grocery store are the one's I wind up writing about.

Ann Patchett

writing character fall

No matter how much we love a book, the experience of reading it isn't complete until we can give it to someone who will love it as much as we do

Ann Patchett

reading giving book

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. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps.

Ann Patchett

reading character mean

We have different kinds of intimacy with many, many people. I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.

Ann Patchett

different two people

There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.

Ann Patchett

goodness fortune people

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.

Ann Patchett

block ideas moving

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

Ann Patchett

gone life mean

My writing process has changed because it's harder to find uninterrupted time.

Ann Patchett

changed process writing

Only a few of us are going to be willing to break our own hearts by trading in the living beauty of imagination for the stark disappointment of words.

Ann Patchett

disappointment heart writing

Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

Ann Patchett

senior writing school

I am not mature enough as a reader to enjoy a book in which I hate all the people.

Ann Patchett

hate book people

I don't want to stand with somebody's praise. Whereas now when people come up to me, they say, "I love the bookstore" and "Kids! Come here, come here! This is the woman who owns the bookstore." That's incredible. I can say to that, "Thank you for shopping local. Thank you for coming in. What are you reading? Let's talk about books." It's about something I'm doing as opposed to somehow something I am. I feel comfortable and positive in that role. Because it's about reading. It's about books. It's about learning. It's about business and tax base.

Ann Patchett

reading kids book

You can’t control what other people think about your art. Think about the part of yourself that you can control, which is your ability to be kind and loving and creative.

Ann Patchett

people art thinking

You are always someones favorite unfolding story

Ann Patchett

unfolding stories

Sometimes not having any idea where we’re going works out better than we could possibly have imagined.

Ann Patchett

work-out sometimes ideas

I will go and speak at rotary clubs. I will go and speak at schools. I'm so much in the community, but in a way that I love. It's been such a positive thing.

Ann Patchett

clubs community school

Hope is a horrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.

Ann Patchett

horrible virtue mouths