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He Believed That Life, True Life, Was Something That Was Stored In Music. True Life Was Kept Safe In The Lines Of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin While You Went Out In The World And Met The Obligations Required Of You. Certainly He Knew (though Did Not Completely Understand) That Opera Wasn't For Everyone, But For Everyone He Hoped There Was Something. The Records He Cherished, The Rare Opportunities To See A Live Performance, Those Were The Marks By Which He Gauged His Ability To Love.

-Ann Patchett

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He Believed That Life,

Ann Patchett

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He Believed That Life, True Life, Was Something That Was Stored In Music. True Life Was Kept Safe In The Lines Of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin While You Went Out In The World And Met The Obligations Required Of You. Certainly He Knew (though Did Not Completely Understand) That Opera Wasn't For Everyone, But For Everyone He Hoped There Was Something. The Records He Cherished, The Rare Opportunities To See A Live Performance, Those Were The Marks By Which He Gauged His Ability To Love.

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Just Because Things Hadn't Gone The Way I Had Planned Didn't Necessarily Mean They Had Gone Wrong.

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I Think That People All Grow Up And Have Their Same Personalities, But You Can Say, "oh, I Can See The Roots Of This Personality, Which I Didn't Like, But Then You Grew Up, And I Can Still See You As That Person, But I Do Really Like You Now." Which Is Sort Of How I Feel About Children - I Mean, About Children Who I Knew When I Was A Child And Grew Up With, And They're Still My Friends, And Children That I Know As Children Who I See Growing Up, And Every Year I Like Them More.

It Was Never The Right Time Or It Was Always The Right Time, Depending On How You Looked At It.

Sometimes If There's A Book You Really Want To Read, You Have To Write It Yourself.

I Don't Want To Stand With Somebody's Praise.

That Is One Thing I've Learned, That It Is Possible To Really Understand Things At Certain Points, And Not Be Able To Retain Them, To Be In Utter Confusion Just A Short While Later. I Used To Think That Once You Really Knew A Thing, Its Truth Would Shine On Forever. Now It's Pretty Obvious To Me That More Often Than Not The Batteries Fade, And Sometimes What You Knew Even Goes Out With A Bang When You Try To Call On It, Just Like A Lightbulb Cracking Off When You Throw The Switch.

I Could Teach. I Could Wait Tables. I Could Cook In A Restaurant. Food And Teaching Were The Two Skills I Had.

You Should Not Have Assault Rifles In Your Home.

Staying Within The World Of A Novel Gives Us The Ability To Be Quiet And Alone, Two Skills That Are Disappearing Faster Than The Polar Icecaps.

That Was The Way Things Worked. When You Were Looking For The Big Fight, The Moment That You Thought Would Knock Everything Over, Nothing Much Happened At All.

I Always Feel It Is A Shortcoming Of Mine As A Reader And As A Writer That I Frankly Need To Like Somebody.

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I Am Not Mature Enough As A Reader To Enjoy A Book In Which I Hate All The People.

Praise And Criticism Seem To Me To Operate Exactly On The Same Level. If You Get A Great Review, It's Really Thrilling For About Ten Minutes. If You Get A Bad Review, It's Really Crushing For Ten Minutes. Either Way, You Go On.

Reading Is A Private Act, Private Even From The Person Who Wrote The Book. Once The Novel Is Out There, The Author Is Beside The Point. The Reader And The Book Have Their Own Relationship Now, And Should Be Left Alone To Work Things Out For Themselves.

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I Read Books I Hate All The Time, And I Don't Mention Them Or Talk About Them.

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Art Stands On The Shoulders Of Craft, Which Means That To Get To The Art, You Must Master The Craft.

Happiness Compresses Time, Makes It Dense And Bright, Pocketsized.

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I Saw That My Best Work Was My Most Personal Work, Which Is Odd, Because My Fiction Is Very Far Afield And Has Nothing To Do With My Life.

I'm Very Comfortable Writing.

That's The Way I Work. I Get It All Plotted In My Mind, And Then I Write It Down.

If You've Had Good Gin On A Hot Day In Southern California With The People You Love, You Forget Nebraska. The Two Things Cannot Coexist. The Stronger, Better Of The Two Wins.

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.

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When I Wrote Nonfiction, My Best Work Was The Really Personal Stuff.

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.

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Why Is It That We Understand Playing The Cello Will Require Work, But We Attribute Writing To The Magic Of Inspiration?

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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."

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You Can't Be A Jerk In Order To Be A Good Writer.

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Never Be So Focused On What You're Looking For That You Overlook The Thing You Actually Find.

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The Thing You Can Count On In Life Is That Tennessee Will Always Be Scorching Hot In August.

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I Wanted To Eat Her Pain, Take It Into Me And Make It My Own.

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Responsible Person

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I Believe, In My Better Moments, That There Is A Plan And Things Go Not The Way We Want Them To But The Way They Should.

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It's Always Better To Have Too Much To Read Than Not Enough.

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Home, Bed, Sleep, Mother--who Knew More Beautiful Words Than These?

The Light Was Cut To Lace By The Trees That Had Grown So Thick With Leaves In The Last Few Months.

I Know Where I'm Going. And If I Don't Know Where I'm Going, I Don't Tend To Get Anywhere.

Keeping People Safe Is A Story We Tell Ourselves.

From My Table Inside I Watch The Glamorous Women Outside Who Are Lunching On Spa Cobb Salads Without Blue Cheese Or Dressing. The Man With The Bread Basket Wanders From Table To Table, Lonesome As A Cloud. When He Comes To Me His Basket Is Full And Perfectly Arranged. He Gives Me A Smile Of Sincere Pleasure When I Tell Him I Will Take Both The Sourdough Roll And The Cheese Stick.

This Is My Job, My Livelihood: The Health And The Well-being Of The Publishing Industry. We're All Responsible For This.

You Can't Say, "i'm Too Busy Writing To Be Political." You Are One Person.

Part Of It Is Living In Tennessee. I'm So Out Of The Loop. And As A Person, I'm Out Of The Loop. I'm Oblivious By Nature.

You Are Always Someones Favorite Unfolding Story

Writing Is A Miserable, Awful Business. Stay With It. It Is Better Than Anything In The World.

Even Though I Didn't Know I Was Applying For The Job, I Have Somehow Become The Spokesperson For Independent Book Stores.

Love Is A Rebellious Bird That No One Can Tame

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.

She Sang As If She Was Saving The Life Of Every Person In The Room.

I Love A Large Cast Of Characters. That's The Way Life Is: It's Flooded With People And We Keep Them All Straight.

One Must Not Be Shy Where Language Is Concerned.

The Quality Of Gifts Depends On The Sincerity Of The Giver.

That's Important To Me, To Recommend Books.

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If I Was A Waitress, I Was Too Tired At The End Of The Day When I Came Home To Try To Write.

I Think The Best Vacation Is The One That Relieves Me Of My Own Life For A While And Then Makes Me Long For It Again.

Fiction Is Always Really A Labor.

I Should Figure Out Why I'm So Much More Interested In Doing Something That I Think Is Really Hard. But, Somehow, The Thing That Is Hard For Me Feels More Noble.

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.

Thank God Roxane Coss Had Not Fallen In Love With One Of The Russians. She Doubted They Could Make It Up The Stairs Without Stopping For A Cigarette And Telling At Least One Loud Story That No One Could Understand.

Everyone Knows Everything Eventually.

For A Man To Know What He Has When He Had It, That Is What Makes Him A Fortunate Man.

You Can’t Pick Up And Leave Everything Behind Because There Is Too Much Sadness In The World And Not Enough Places To Go.

Whenever I Saw Her, I Felt Like I Had Been Living In Another Country, Doing Moderately Well In Another Language, And Then She Showed Up Speaking English And Suddenly I Could Speak With All The Complexity And Nuance That I Hadn't Realized Was Gone. With Lucy I Was A Native Speaker.

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.

Some People Need A Huge Amount Of Attention, And They Are Worthy Of That Attention, And They're Still Exhausting.

I Will Write My Way Into Another Life.

No One Tells The Truth To People They Don't Actually Know, And If They Do It Is A Horrible Trait. Everyone Wants Something Smaller, Something Neater Than The Truth.

Telling The Truth

Reading Fiction Is Important. It Is A Vital Means Of Imagining A Life Other Than Our Own, Which In Turn Makes Us More Empathetic Beings.

I Made A Startling Discovery. Time Spent Writing = Output Of Work. Amazing.

I Am The Person Who Is Appropriating Stories That Are Not Mine And Turning Them Into A Book.

He Doesn’t Know To Want For More Because Nothing In His Life Has Been As Much As This...on That Night He Thinks That No One Has Ever Had So Much And Only Later Will He Know He Should Have Asked For More.

The Love Between Humans Is The Thing That Nails Us To The Earth.

Time Has A Funny Way Of Collapsing When You Go Back To A Place You Once Loved. You Find Yourself Thinking, I Was Kissed In That Building, I Climbed Up That Tree.

Finding Yourself

You Can't Be A Good Person When You're Writing And A Bad Person To Your Husband Or A Bad Friend.

People Seem Able To Love Their Dogs With An Unabashed Acceptance That They Rarely Demonstrate With Family Or Friends. The Dogs Do Not Disappointment Them, Or, If They Do, The Owners Manages To Forget About It Quickly. I Want To Learn To Love People Like This, The Way I Love My Dog, With Pride And Enthusiasm And A Complete Amnesia For Faults. In Short, To Love Others The Way My Dog Loves Me.

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.

The Swedish He Knew Was Mostly From Bergman Films. He Had Learned It As A College Student, Matching The Subtitles To The Sounds. In Swedish, He Could Only Converse On The Darkest Of Subjects.

Society Was Nothing But A Long, Dull Dinner Party Conversation In Which One Was Forced To Speak To One's Partner On Both The Left And The Right.

I Don't Want To Stand With Somebody's Praise. Whereas Now When People Come Up To Me, They Say, "i Love The Bookstore" And "kids! Come Here, Come Here! This Is The Woman Who Owns The Bookstore." That's Incredible. I Can Say To That, "thank You For Shopping Local. Thank You For Coming In. What Are You Reading? Let's Talk About Books." It's About Something I'm Doing As Opposed To Somehow Something I Am. I Feel Comfortable And Positive In That Role. Because It's About Reading. It's About Books. It's About Learning. It's About Business And Tax Base.

Maybe That Was The Definition Of Life Everlasting: The Belief That The Next Generation Would Carry Your Work Forward.

It's Easier To Love A Woman When You Can't Understand A Word She's Saying.

The Kind Of Love That Offers Its Life So Easily, So Stupidly, Is Always The Love That Is Not Returned.

Time Is The Most Extraordinary Gift For Friendship. You'll Get To Eat Your Meals Together And Study Together; In Some Cases You'll Even Sleep In The Same Room. You'll Have Time To Waste On Each Other. You'll Find Out Every Single Thing You Have In Common And Still Have Time To Catalogue All Of Your Differences. Don't Underestimate The Vital Necessity Of Friendship In Your Life Because It Is The Thing That Will Sustain You Later, When There Will Be Considerably Less Time.

I Always Used To Be An Inside Person, And Now I'm An Outside Person.

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.

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I Certainly Have Written A Lot About Police In My Life, And It's Not Only Something That I Know About, But Always Something That Interests Me.

He Realized Now He Was Only Just Beginning To See The Full Extent To Which It Was His Destiny To Follow, To Walk Blindly Into Fates He Could Never Understand. In Fate There Was Reward, In Turning Over One's Heart To God There Was A Magnificence That Lay Beyond Description. At The Moment One Is Sure That All Is Lost, Look At What Is Gained!

If You Want To Write And Can't Figure Out How To Do It, Try This: Pick An Amount Of Time To Sit At Your Desk Every Day. Start With Twenty Minutes, Say, And Work Up As Quickly As Possible To As Much Time As You Can Spare. Do You Really Want To Write? Sit For Two Hours A Day.

I Was Always On Time, I Did My Work To Exact Specifications, I Spoke When Spoken To.

I Don't Believe In Fate, As In, Which I - As A Catholic, I Think, Sort Of Predestination. But I Certainly Believe In Chance.

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.

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When Well Told, A Story Captured The Subtle Movement Of Change. If A Novel Was A Map Of A Country, A Story Was The Bright Silver Pin That Marked The Crossroads.

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I Know That There Are People Out There Who Believe We Should Get Rid Of All Guns.

My Novels Are Very Much The Same, As I Think Many People's Novels Are.

Maybe The Private Life Wasn't Forever. Maybe Everyone Got It For A Little While And Then Spent The Rest Of Their Lives Remembering.

We Are Taught To Be Suspicious, Especially Of Anyone Who Might Not Look Like Us Or Share Our Beliefs.

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?

If I Had Problems, I Kept Them To Myself. I Didn't Make A Scene.

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 Spend Your Whole Life In Front Of A Screen.

Carmen Prayed Hard. She Prayed While Standing Near The Priest In Hopes It Would Give Her Request Extra Credibility. What She Prayed For Was Nothing. She Prayed That God Would Look On Them And See The Beauty Of Their Existence And Leave Them Alone.

It Makes You Wonder. All The Brilliant Things We Might Have Done With Our Lives If Only We Suspected We Knew How.

My Writing Process Has Changed Because It's Harder To Find Uninterrupted Time.

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.

You See An Absolutely Brilliant Film Later, As An Adult, And You Walk Out Thinking About What To Have For Dinner. Whereas Something Like Jaws Winds Up Having A Huge Effect On Me. If Only My Parents Had Been Taking Me To Kurosawa Films When I Was Eight, But No.

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I Am A Totally Public Person.

Nonfiction Is Easy And Fiction Is Hard.

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.

We Have Different Kinds Of Intimacy With Many, Many People. I'm Disappointed By Well-written Novels That Only Deal With Two Or Three People.

Hope Is A Horrible Thing, You Know. I Don't Know Who Decided To Package Hope As A Virtue Because It's Not. It's A Plague. Hope Is Like Walking Around With A Fishhook In Your Mouth And Somebody Just Keeps Pulling It And Pulling It.

It Was Too Much Work To Remember Things You Might Not Have Again, And So One By One They Opened Up Their Hands And Let Them Go.

If Someone Loves You For What You Can Do Then It's Flattering, But Why Do You Love Them? If Someone Loves You For Who You Are Then They Have To Know You, Which Means You Have To Know Them.

No Matter How Much We Love A Book, The Experience Of Reading It Isn't Complete Until We Can Give It To Someone Who Will Love It As Much As We Do

Using Your Imagination Is The One Time In Life You Can Really Go Anywhere.

I Decided To Make My Living As A Magazine Writer. And I Found That It Was Really Easy And Fun.

That's One Of The Many Things About Having The Bookstore That I Adore. I Can Walk Into The Store And Say To Somebody, "i'm Glad You're Reading This Book" Or "i'm Glad You're Getting This Book" Or "don't Get That Book. I Read That Book And Hated That Book. Let's Get You This Book Instead."

To Say It Was A Beautiful Day Would Not Begin To Explain It. It Was That Day When The End Of Summer Intersects Perfectly With The Start Of Fall .... [p.218 Ff.]

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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.

Updike And Bellow And Roth Were My Three Favorite Writers When I Was Young And Throughout My Life.

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