...the terrible crumple and blanch of a lie come undone...

— Ann Patchett

The two sisters were connected by neither love nor mutual affinity but by a very small bathroom that could be entered from the bedroom on either side.

— Ann Patchett

The women in the kitchen took turns making a fuss over the baby, acting like it was their job to keep her entertained until the Magi arrived. But the baby wasn't entertained. Her blue eyes were glazed over. She was staring into the middle distance, tired of everything. All this rush to make sandwiches and take in presents for a girl who was not year a year old.

— Ann Patchett

The women in the kitchen took turns making a fuss over the baby, acting like it was their job to keep her entertained until the Magi arrived. But the baby wasn't entertained. Her blue eyes were glazed over. She was staring into the middle distance, tired of everything. All this rush to make sandwiches and take in presents for a girl who was not yet a year old.

— Ann Patchett

They lived their lives only for the hour that lay ahead of them.

— Ann Patchett

...was an elegant woman in a city of so many thousands of elegant women...

— Ann Patchett

We shared ideas like sweaters, with easy exchange and lack of ownership.

— Ann Patchett

What I like about the job of being a novelist, and at the same time what I find so exhausting about it, is that it's the closest thing to being God you're ever going to get. All the decisions are yours. You decide when the sun comes up. You decide who gets to fall in love and who gets hit by a car. Furthermore, you have to make all the trees and all the leaves and then sew the leaves onto the trees. Furthermore, you make the entire world.

— Ann Patchett

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.

— Ann Patchett

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.

— Ann Patchett