Ann Patchett

“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.”

“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.”

“I had a real computer solitaire problem. I'd gotten to the point where I had to win a game before I could write, and each time I got up to get a cup of water, I had to win a game. It was a nightmare.”

“My favorite thing about Nashville is the parks.”

“I don't really cry.”

“It is said the sesta is one of the only gifts the Europeans brought to South America, but I imagine the Brazilians could have figured out how to sleep in the afternoon without having to endure centuries of murder and enslavement.”

“People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.”

“He was so close to her then that they owned every molecule of air in the tiny room and the air grew heavy with their desire and worked to move them together.”

“I think I would probably have been a good mother.”

“I have been shown so much kindness in my life, so for me to write books about good, kind people seems completely natural.”

“He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.”

“I missed my mother's father. Is that even possible? Maybe I had fallen asleep for a while. Maybe I was like her, just waking up and looking for him to be there. I wondered how it would have changed things for all of us if he had stayed home the day he was supposed to die in his car. How his decision to go out for something small, something like coffee or orange juice which everyone could have done without, had changed things for all of us.”

“If Kumar had his way they would leave for Fiji every year just before Thanksgiving and not return until the New Year rang in and the decorations came down. They would swim with the fishes and lie on the beach eating papaya. On the years they were tired of Fiji they would go to Bali or Sydney or any sunny, sandy place whose name contained an equal number of consonants and vowels.”

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

“I wanted two girls," she said. "You and your sister. I wanted exactly what I had. Other people's children are too hard”

“It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.”

“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. … It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.”

“...the terrible crumple and blanch of a lie come undone...”

“One must not be shy where language is concerned.”

“Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.”