Ann Patchett Quotes - Page 2

It turns out that the distance from head to hand, from wafting butterfly to entomological specimen, is achieved through regular, disciplined practice. What begins as something like a dream will in fact stay a dream forever unless you have the tools and the discipline to bring it out.

The sleep he went back to was never the one he left.

Oh, my love,' she said. 'What do the only children do?''We'll never have to know.

Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.

Isn't that what everyone wants, just for a moment to be unencumbered?

Gen was sleeping the sleep of the heavily drugged.

The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.

If a novel was a map of a country, a story was the bright silver pin that marked the crossroads.

...as if the world had become a giant train station in which everything was delayed until further notice.

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

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.

Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.

There was no time for kissing but she wanted him to know that in the future there would be. A kiss in so much loneliness was like a hand pulling you up out of the water, scooping you up from a place of drowning and into the reckless abundance of air. A kiss, another kiss.