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81 " 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. "
― Ann Patchett , This is the Story of a Happy Marriage
82 " She sang as if she was saving the life of every person in the room. "
― Ann Patchett , Bel Canto
83 " 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. "
84 " 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. "
85 " 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 lightbulb cracking off when you throw the switch. "
― Ann Patchett , Truth & Beauty
86 " For a man to know what he has when he had it, that is what makes him a fortunate man. "
87 " 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. "
88 " Everyone knows everything eventually. "
― Ann Patchett , State of Wonder
89 " If you're trying to find out what's coming next, turn off everything you own that has an OFF switch and listen. "
― Ann Patchett , What Now?
90 " 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. "
91 " 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. "
92 " 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. "
― Ann Patchett , Commonwealth
93 " 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. "
94 " There can be something cruel about people who have had good fortune. They equate it with personal goodness. "
95 " 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. "
96 " Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering. "
97 " 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. "
98 " Half the things in this life I wish I could remember and the other half I wish I could forget. "
99 " 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 "
100 " The kind of love that offers its life so easily, so stupidly, is always the love that is not returned. "