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

— Ann Patchett

I think that she is everything I have ever loved about our religion distilled down to fit into one person, everything about the faith that is both selfless and responsible.

— Ann Patchett

It is said the Vesta is one of the few 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.

— Ann Patchett

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

— Ann Patchett

It's like a big circle. I've gone on a get-a-man crusade, but so far it's been a disaster, and I'm feeling as bad about myself as I ever have. I know I'm a great person and all that, a good friend, but I feel like real bottom of the barrel girlfriend material.

— Ann Patchett

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.

— Ann Patchett

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

— Ann Patchett

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

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

— Ann Patchett

Katsuki Oshawa - (he) believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music.

— Ann Patchett