You learn every time you write a book, and then you take that new knowledge and experience into the next book. Hopefully, every time, you raise the bar.
— Ann Patchett
Writing is an amazing place to hide, to go into the rabbit hole, and pull the trap door down over your head.
I have been shown so much kindness in my life, so for me to write books about good, kind people seems completely natural.
My father was a police officer in Los Angeles.
I've never had a terrible job. I've been a cook, waitress, bookseller, teacher, freelance writer. I know what the bad jobs are, and I haven't done them.
I don't know how to write a novel in the world of cellphones. I don't know how to write a novel in the world of Google, in which all factual information is available to all characters. So I have to stand on my head to contrive a plot in which the characters lose their cellphone and are separated from technology.
I don't really cry.
I think I would probably have been a good mother.
I have been accused of being a Pollyanna, but I think there are plenty of people dealing with the darker side of human nature, and if I am going to write about people who are kind and generous and loving and thoughtful, so what?
I can write for any magazine now, in any voice. I can do it in two hours, I could do it in my sleep, it's like writing a grocery list.
People gave me such a bad time about wanting a baby. I didn't want a baby, and I still don't. I wanted a dog.
Part of it is living in Tennessee. I'm so out of the loop. And as a person, I'm out of the loop. I'm oblivious by nature.
The '70s were a different time as far as parenting was concerned. People left their kids in the car with the windows cracked while they went to the grocery store.
I go through long periods of time when I don't write, and I'm fine.
My degree of closeness to my step-siblings varies among the seven, but I have a great sense of loyalty to all of them, especially the four from my childhood. If those people needed my help, I would be there for them.
In my experience, surgeons tend to need boatloads of attention.
I kissed John Updike as he presented me with an award. It wasn't the best kiss as far as kisses go, but I hold the fact that I kissed John Updike, that he kissed me, very close to my heart.
I'm just such a Luddite, and I want to write books about Luddites.
Anyone who doesn't read doesn't have any business writing.
I think it's brain chemistry. I'm a positive, cheerful person, and I think it is absolutely the luck of the draw. I think the life I have had has come largely from the chemicals in my head. I see my life as good, and I think, a lot of times, if you see your life as good, then that's how it turns out.
I was very influenced by The Magic Mountain. It's a book that had a huge impact on me. I loved that as a shape for a novel: put a bunch of people in a beautiful place, give them all tuberculosis, make them all stay in a fur sleeping bag for several years and see what happens.
Well, I always say that the two things I was most disastrous at in my life, being a teenager and being a wife, were the two things I really wound up cashing in on when I was writing fluffy magazine pieces.
Write because you love the art and the discipline, not because you're looking to sell something.
I don't write for an audience, I don't think whether my book will sell, I don't sell it before I finish writing it.
I think someone gets stitches in all my novels.
I've been writing the same book my whole life - that you're in one family, and all of a sudden, you're in another family, and it's not your choice, and you can't get out.
I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.
I believe I can solve others' problems. It's great when it works, but for the most part, it's very unappealing.
I'd like to read all of Proust.
I had a real computer solitaire problem. I'd gotten to the point where I had to win a game before I could write, and each time I got up to get a cup of water, I had to win a game. It was a nightmare.
My favorite thing about Nashville is the parks.
In my life, I have met astonishingly good people.
Praise and criticism seem to me to operate exactly on the same level. If you get a great review, it's really thrilling for about ten minutes. If you get a bad review, it's really crushing for ten minutes. Either way, you go on.
You see an absolutely brilliant film later, as an adult, and you walk out thinking about what to have for dinner. Whereas something like Jaws winds up having a huge effect on me. If only my parents had been taking me to Kurosawa films when I was eight, but no.
I think people become consumed with selling a book when they need to be consumed with writing it.
