Ann Patchett

“In the end, it's a good investment to have a bookshop in your community.”

“Reading fiction is and always was the most effective way to identify with people different from ourselves.”

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

“Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to art, you have to master craft.”

“Sometimes the story of my life has been waiting for me to notice it.”

“Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.”

“Hope is a horrible thing, you know. It's a plague. It's like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it.”

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

“Information is endlessly available to us; where shall wisdom be found?”

“We are always works in progress. We are never finished.”

“The tricky thing about being a writer, or about being any kind of artist, is that in addition to making the art you also have to make a living.”

“The secret to a good life is to pay attention.”

“Not every important thing in life can be justified by a cost-benefit analysis.”

“What you have to do is work with the raw material you have, namely you, and never let up.”

“The journey is the thing.”

“The question of what you want to be when you grow up is a question that you should never stop asking yourself.”

“These are the stories that we tell ourselves and tell each other, and that's how we know who we are.”

“It is always better to have a book you have read than a book you are going to read.”

“The world, that is, of books, is the world as it should be, while the world we live in is the world as it is.”

“It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned fingers and skinned knees.”