Quotes from Ann Patchett

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

Why is it that we understand playing the cello will require work, but we attribute writing to the magic of inspiration?

I made a startling discovery. Time spent writing = output of work. Amazing.

To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.

I saw that my best work was my most personal work, which is odd, because my fiction is very far afield and has nothing to do with my life.

It was too much work to remember things you might not have again, and so one by one they opened up their hands and let them go.

I was always on time, I did my work to exact specifications, I spoke when spoken to.

That's the way I work. I get it all plotted in my mind, and then I write it down.

When I wrote nonfiction, my best work was the really personal stuff.

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.

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

My degree of closeness to my step-siblings varies among the seven, but I have a great sense of loyalty to all of them, especially the four from my childhood. If those people needed my help, I would be there for them.

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 someone just keep pulling it and pulling it."STATE OF WONDER

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