Baby or dog?

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. 

Ann Patchett, “This Dog’s Life,” in The Editors of The Bark, eds., Dog Is My Co-Pilot (New York: Three-Rivers Press, 2003), p. 24 (essay runs pp. 19-24). (Editors are Claudia Kawcynska and Cameron Woo.)

Writers face writing with dread

I have never in my life known a writer who enjoyed the actual act of writing less than Lucy [Grealy], which is saying something because just about every writer I know sits down to work with some degree of dread. 

Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), p. 113.

First book makes an author taller

I wrote the last sentence of The Patron Saint of Liars in early April and stumbled out of my apartment and into the beautiful spring feeling panicked and amazed. There is no single experience in my life as a writer to match that moment, the blue of the sky and the breeze drifting in from the bay. I had done the thing I had always wanted to do: I had written a book, all the way to the end. Even if it proved to be terrible, it was mine. I found Elizabeth and we both printed out our books and stood on them to see how much taller they had made us. 

Ann Patchett, Truth and Beauty: A Friendship (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2004), pp. 86-87.

Growth and modernization can be positive overall

If the growth and modernization of a city means you get rid of the Klan but have to endure bad condos, I say so be it.

Ann Patchett, "Tennessee," in Matt Weiland & Sean Wilsey eds., State by State: A Panaramic Portrait of America (2008)