Never be so focused on what you’re looking for that you overlook the thing you actually find.
—Ann Patchett
There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you’d been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you’re suspended knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.
—Ann Patchett
When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought i would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all
—Ann Patchett
Topics: Worry
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
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
I believe that my gift in this world is not that I’m smarter or more talented than anyone else: it’s that I had a singular goal. I don’t want other stuff: friends, kids, travel. What makes me happy is writing.
—Ann Patchett
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
- Andre Norton American Science Fiction Writer
- Alice Walker American Novelist, Activist
- Isabel Allende Chilean Novelist
- Annie Dillard American Writer
- Maxine Hong Kingston American Novelist, Memoirist
- Joyce Maynard American Novelist
- Anne Lamott American Writer
- Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
- Lloyd Alexander American Writer
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