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5b3c592
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There are always those perfect times with the people we love, those moments of joy and equality that sustain us later on...These moments are the foundation upon which we build the house that will shelter us into our final years, so that when love calls out, "How far would you go for me?" you can look it in the eye and say truthfully, "Farther than you would ever have thought was possible."
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Ann Patchett |
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4800d3c
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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ea33051
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It is said the sesta is one of the only 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.
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Ann Patchett |
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413f840
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I will write my way into another life.
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Ann Patchett |
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6cb28ba
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He is fifteen and ten and five. He is an instant. He is flying back to her. He is hers again. She feels the weight of him in her chest as he comes into her arms. He is her son, her beloved child, and she takes him back.
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motherhood
spirit
death
meditation
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Ann Patchett |
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33db2ae
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Is it possible that anxiety ends at the moment when we no longer have time for it?
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Ann Patchett |
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5f5f032
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The quality of gifts depends on the sincerity of the giver.
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Ann Patchett |
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a9bb280
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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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Ann Patchett |
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e70870b
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Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame
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Ann Patchett |
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8e70320
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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..
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lessons
inspiration
hope
life
wisdom
patchett
crossroads
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Ann Patchett |
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e7522b3
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Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world
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Ann Patchett |
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c777139
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The timing of the electrical failure seemed dramatic and perfectly correct, as if the lights had said, "You have no need for sight. Listen."
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Ann Patchett |
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6ca3869
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As long as it's a regular day, not too rough to begin with, the ocean is pretty smooth once you make it out past the first set of waves. That's why people are afriad to swim in the ocean. They try to jump over those waves and get slammed down to the bottom and pulled across the sand like a piece of shell. You've got to go throught them, dive under just when they're rising up for you, set your direction, close your eyes, and just swim like h..
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Ann Patchett |
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5d59d09
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Sleep was a country for which he could not obtain a visa.
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Ann Patchett |
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41a6840
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the story of my marriage, which is the great joy and astonishment of my life, is too much like a fairy tale, the German kind, unsweetened by Disney.
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marriage
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Ann Patchett |
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cbc7019
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Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano.
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Ann Patchett |
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54d3714
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It's easier to love a woman when you can't understand a word she's saying.
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women
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Ann Patchett |
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27c22e4
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There's no protecting anyone," Fix said, and reached over from his wheelchair to put his hand on hers. "Keeping people safe is a story we tell ourselves."
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Ann Patchett |
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742a71e
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She understood in life that a person was only allowed one trip down to hell.
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Ann Patchett |
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f8cfad4
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The more we are willing to separate from distraction and step into the open arms of boredom, the more writing will get on the page.
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Ann Patchett |
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1985e6c
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Home, bed, sleep, mother--who knew more beautiful words than these?
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Ann Patchett |
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ae07d08
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It would be incorrect in every sense to say that so near the end of his life he had lost his faith, when in fact God seemed more abundant to him in the Regina Cleri home than any place he had been before. God was in the folds of his bathrobe, the ache of his knees. God saturated the hallways in the form of a pale electrical light. But now that his heart had become so shiftless and unreliable, now that he should be sensing the afterlife lik..
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Ann Patchett |
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3b57ad8
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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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Ann Patchett |
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5986c28
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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0b59a40
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But together they moved through the world quite easily, two small halves of courage making a brave whole.
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Ann Patchett |
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6cd76ea
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received a gift--it was the first decent piece of instruction about marriage I had ever been given in my twenty-five years of life. "Does your husband make you a better person?" Edra asked. There I was in that sky-blue pool beneath a bright blue sky, my fingers breaking apart the light on the water, and I had no idea what she was talking about. "Are you smarter, kinder, more generous, more compassionate, a better writer?" she said, running ..
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Ann Patchett |
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9d04535
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The love between humans is the thing that nails us to this earth.
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Ann Patchett |
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4c9f1bb
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I imagine there are people out there who got a dog when what they wanted was a baby, but I wonder if there aren't other people who had a baby when all they really needed was a dog.
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Ann Patchett |
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bae01ba
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Franny gave her sister a tired smile. "Oh, my love," she said. "What do the only children do?" "We'll never have to know," Caroline said."
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Ann Patchett |
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b3bfa49
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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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cd31c03
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But we cannot unbraid the story of another person's life and take out all the parts that don't suit our purposes and put forth only the ones that do.
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Ann Patchett |
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d50272d
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The three stages of life: youth, middle age, and 'You're looking good, Mr. Keating.
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Ann Patchett |
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50ec30e
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Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means that to get to the art, you must master the craft. If you want to write, practice writing.
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Ann Patchett |
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ad0442f
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Bad habits were all a matter of perspective, and as long as the present was viewed through the lens of the past, anyone would say he was doing a spectacular job.
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family-relationships
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Ann Patchett |
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8e24f0c
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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.
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Ann Patchett |
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556ce51
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One must not be shy where language is concerned.
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lad
language
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Ann Patchett |
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987881c
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The light was cut to lace by the trees that had grown so thick with leaves in the last few months.
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Ann Patchett |
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066d399
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Being a childless woman of childbearing age, I am a walking target for people's concerned analysis. No one looks at a single man with a Labrador retriever and says, "Will you look at the way he throws the tennis ball to that dog? Now there's a guy who wants to have a son." A dog, after all, is man's best friend, a comrade, a pal. But give a dog to a woman and people will say she is sublimating. If she says that she, in fact, doesn't want ch..
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Ann Patchett |
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b9b9743
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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.
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nebraska
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Ann Patchett |
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0b82312
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Every drop of rain hit the ground with such force it bounced back up again, giving the earth the appearance of something boiling.
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Ann Patchett |
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9505d72
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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.
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writing
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Ann Patchett |
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aeaec30
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Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth.
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Ann Patchett |
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352c12f
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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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7df9987
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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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Ann Patchett |