Top 207 Quotes & Sayings by Ann Patchett - Page 4

Seeing images of violence - it's always about how somebody's going to kill you.

I have seven step-siblings from my mother's second and third marriages. 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.

That's important to me, to recommend books.

You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.

If what we want to do is promote reading and writing and publishing and making sure this is a business that keeps going - because it is a business! It's not just an art - then we have to take responsibility. I get sort of crazy and frothy when I think about this. It really matters.

I don't want to stand with somebody's praise.

You can't spend your whole life in front of a screen.

I could teach. I could wait tables. I could cook in a restaurant. Food and teaching were the two skills I had.

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.

I don't believe in fate, as in, which I - as a Catholic, I think, sort of predestination. But I certainly believe in chance.

I tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are too many notebooks floating around, but maybe that's a good thing.

You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person.

This is my job, my livelihood: the health and the well-being of the publishing industry. We're all responsible for this.

We are taught to be suspicious, especially of anyone who might not look like us or share our beliefs.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.

I always used to be an inside person, and now I'm an outside person.

I know that there are people out there who believe we should get rid of all guns.

Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves.

I'm very sentimental about lobsters. The last lobster I ate was the only lobster I cooked.

Fiction is always really a labor.

If anybody had shown me the paperwork for how my life was going to look in five years, I would have said, "No. That is not where I want to go."

You should not have assault rifles in your home.

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.

If I was a waitress, I was too tired at the end of the day when I came home to try to write.

I really do think that our subconscious gets corrupted with fear, and fear is how news media - all media - makes us [watch] long enough to get to the Tide commercial. That's all it's about. Generating fear so that we can buy the proper laundry detergent.

You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer.

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