People seem able to love their dogs with an unabashed acceptance that they rarely demonstrate with family or friends. The dogs do not disappoint them, or if they do, the owners manage 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.

— Ann Patchett

Questions are for the benefit of every student, not just the one raising his hand. If you don't have the starch to stand up in class and admit what you don't understand, then I don't have the time to explain it to you. If you don't have a policy against nonsense you can wind up with a dozen timid little rabbits lined up in the hall outside your office, all waiting to whisper the same imbecilic question in your ear.

— Ann Patchett

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. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and 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.

— Ann Patchett

Running, the music flew into him, became the wind that pushed back his hair and the slap of his own feet on the pavement.

— Ann Patchett

She didn't know how to hate her mother yet, but every time she left her father crying in the airport she came that much closer to figuring it out.

— Ann Patchett

She's growing up," Sister Evangeline said. And I wanted to tell her no, I'm not. Everything is exactly the same.

— Ann Patchett

Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.

— Ann Patchett

Somebody's going to have to make the money to buy you all those books."" They're free," Franny said. "I check them out of the library."" Well, thank God for libraries," Caroline said.

— Ann Patchett

Some children were lucky enough to have their Potter novels banned by witch-hunting school boards and micromanaging ministers. Is there any greater job than a book you're not allowed to read, a book you could go to hell for reading?

— Ann Patchett

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.

— Ann Patchett