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d98a761
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It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.
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Ann Patchett |
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3672596
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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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Ann Patchett |
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45d6265
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Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don't you think? 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.
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Ann Patchett |
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78739ea
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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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Ann Patchett |
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bc9ddb0
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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db0a604
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Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.
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Ann Patchett |
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2246a07
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Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours--long hallways and unforeseen stairwells--eventually puts you in the place you are now.
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woman
memory
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Ann Patchett |
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dfd8d1d
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In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.
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Ann Patchett |
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a3b4207
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There was such an incredible logic to kissing, such a metal-to-magnet pull between two people that it was a wonder that they found the strength to prevent themselves from succumbing every second. Rightfully, the world should be a whirlpool of kissing into which we sank and never found the strength to rise up again.
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Ann Patchett |
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08d6ee2
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It was never the right time or it was always the right time, depending on how you looked at it.
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Ann Patchett |
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60f4dd4
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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?
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Ann Patchett |
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08724c9
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Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, v..
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relationships
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Ann Patchett |
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80f677b
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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.
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friendship
conversation
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Ann Patchett |
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468de3c
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Did you ever want to be a writer?" "No," she said, and she would have told him. "I only wanted to be a reader."
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Ann Patchett |
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6c6382a
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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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kiss
love
gen
save
forbidden
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Ann Patchett |
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91d4187
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I wanted to eat her pain, take it into me and make it my own.
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Ann Patchett |
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bb26ed0
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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.
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love
forgiveness
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Ann Patchett |
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cb05f08
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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 ma..
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Ann Patchett |
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1b16591
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shame should be reserved for the things we choose to do, not the circumstances that life puts on us
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Ann Patchett |
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fcaf601
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Sometimes love does not have the most honorable beginnings, and the endings, the endings will break you in half. It's everything in between we live for.
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Ann Patchett |
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36d25db
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She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room.
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Ann Patchett |
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494fa22
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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be604e5
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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57bcb4c
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Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned wi..
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writing
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Ann Patchett |
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a9b5cb9
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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 lightbul..
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Ann Patchett |
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543abf4
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For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man.
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Ann Patchett |
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1b0026e
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There was no one clear point of loss. It happened over and over again in a thousand small ways and the only truth there was to learn was that there was no getting used to it.
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Ann Patchett |
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45be9d7
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If what a person wants is his life, he tends to be quiet about wanting anything else. Once the life begins to seem secure, one feels the freedom to complain.
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Ann Patchett |
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894628a
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Everyone knows everything eventually.
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Ann Patchett |
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697d379
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If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen.
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Ann Patchett |
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6bf6ab5
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He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.
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Ann Patchett |
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36d1717
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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d3af538
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Life, Teresa knew by now, was a series of losses. It was other things too, better things, but the losses were as solid and dependable as the earth itself.
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Ann Patchett |
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f6cdcd0
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If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish, but because you long to learn how to write well, because there is something that you alone can say.
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Ann Patchett |
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860f421
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There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness.
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Ann Patchett |
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d89faa5
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But it never worked that way, and the sex just made her lonelier. I understood that, as it had made me lonelier too. I could never remember being lonely, certainly not in this way, until I had seen the edge of the ways you could be with another person, which brought up all the myriad ways that person could never be there for you.
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Ann Patchett |
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a1137b5
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Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering.
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Ann Patchett |
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4a43d37
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Most of the time, we're loved for what we can do rather than for who we are. It's not such a bad thing, being loved for what you can do.' 'But the other is better.' 'Better. I hate to say better, but it is. 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.
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Ann Patchett |
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46fc6bf
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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34c67d3
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Half the things in this life I wish I could remember and the other half I wish I could forget.
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Ann Patchett |
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e41cd37
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Isn't that what everyone wants, just for a moment to be unencumbered?
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responsibility
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Ann Patchett |
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f3c2ae0
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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!
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Ann Patchett |
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b16d62a
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All the stories go with you, Franny thought, closing her eyes. All the things I didn't listen to, won't remember, never got right, wasn't around for. All
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Ann Patchett |
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eb117d7
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The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned.
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Ann Patchett |