Ann Patchett Quotes About Writing

Quotes about: Writing

• 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.

  Ann Patchett

  Jobs, Writing, Tea

  Ann Patchett (2004). “Truth and Beauty: A Friendship”

• Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Dots, Coming Back

  Ann Patchett (2009). “What Now?”, p.3, Harper Collins

• I will write my way into another life.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Way, Another Life

  Ann Patchett (2004). “Truth and Beauty: A Friendship”

• I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

  Ann Patchett

  Grief, Believe, Book

• Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.

  Ann Patchett

  Art, Writing, Discipline

• 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

  Disappointment, Writing, Heart

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.27, Harper Collins

• If a person has never given writing a try, they assume that a brilliant idea is hard to come by. But really, even if it takes some digging, ideas are out there. Just open your eyes and look at the world. Writing the ideas down, it turns out, is the real trick.

  Ann Patchett

  Real, Writing, Eye

• Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, World, Awful

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.60, A&C Black

• I was starting to wonder if I was ready to be a writer, not someone who won prizes, got published and was given the time and space to work, but someone who wrote as a course of life. Maybe writing wouldn't have any rewards. Maybe the salvation I would gain through work would only be emotional and intellectual. Wouldn't that be enough, to be a waitress who found an hour or two hidden in every day to write?

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Emotional, Two

• Do you want to do this thing? Sit down and do it. Are you not writing? Keep sitting there. Does it not feel right? Keep sitting there. Think of yourself as a monk walking the path to enlightenment. Think of yourself as a high school senior wanting to be a neurosurgeon. Is it possible? Yes. Is there some shortcut? Not one I've found. Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

  Ann Patchett

  Senior, School, Writing

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.60, A&C Black

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

  Ann Patchett

  Inspiration, Writing, Magic

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.28, A&C Black

• People always say, "Can writing be taught?" I always think, I can teach you how to write a better sentence, how to do dialogue, how to do character, but I can't teach you how to be a decent person, and I can't teach you how to have something to say.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Character, Thinking

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Learn to write by writing

  Ann Patchett

  Writing

• I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.

  Ann Patchett

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Ambition, Dull Life

  Ann Patchett (2004). “Truth and Beauty: A Friendship”

• I think of Nashville as a very natural place. We're easy going, we are ourselves. There isn't a lot of preening or trying to impress. So it's an easy place to just be and that is a good state from which to write.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Thinking, Nashville

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

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Discovery, Made

• I'm very comfortable writing.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Comfortable

  "Ann Patchett lets readers into her personal life in new collection of essays". "PBS NewsHour" with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. December 13, 2013.

• I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.

  Ann Patchett

  Book, Writing, Thinking

• I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what? In my life I have met astonishingly good people.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Thoughtful, Thinking

• Anytime you write about priests or cops, they're hot-button professions.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, Buttons, Hot

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.

  Ann Patchett

  Teenager, Writing, Two

• I craft everything in the beginning. I know where the characters are going before I start writing the book.

  Ann Patchett

  Book, Writing, Character

  Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. August 16, 2016.

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

  Ann Patchett

  Wall, Writing, Quiet

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

• I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.

  Ann Patchett

  Book, Writing, Want

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.30, A&C Black

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