Ann Patchett Quotes

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.

As I grow older, I have had to discard some ideas and policies because they no longer make sense. This strikes me as entirely healthy. I would invite others to do the same.

That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don't expect to get anything back, don't expect recognition for your efforts, don't expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

I like change, and I like being in the middle of change.

I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught.

I thought I never wanted to be on TV. I was dead wrong. I'm almost always dead wrong about the things I think I want, vs. when I just go with the flow, I'm always happy where I end up.

I used to have all these plans and think 'Ah, I have my whole life figured out', but then I realized no matter how much I plan: life happens! So I find myself living day to day trying to do my best, embracing every moment as a learning opportunity and chance to get to know myself a little more.

I have a saying. 'Never judge a book by its cover'. I say that because I don't even know who Ozzy is. I wake up a new person every day.

Travel for me is all about transformation, and I'm fascinated by those people who really do come back from a trip unrecognizable to themselves and perhaps open to the same possibilities they'd have written off not a month before.

'Never Have Your Dog Stuffed' is really advice to myself, a reminder to myself not to avoid change or uncertainty, but to go with it, to surf into change.

You must welcome change as the rule but not as your ruler.

I used to think, 'Everything's okay, or will be. I'll go on with this stance.' But after the World Cup, I was open to everything: if someone suggested a change in my technique I felt could work for me, I was willing to give it a try.

When I shaved my hair, my friends asked me to keep it, maybe make my own wig out of it, but I wanted the old hair to go; it was not mine. I wanted to let go.

I continually reinvent myself. It keeps things interesting.

I'm always reinventing myself.

Without remaining open to change , we can not remain open to life

We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come. -

*I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago... *So soon you will be in that part of the book where you are holding the bulk of the pages in your left hand, and only a thin wisp of the story in your right. *We get one story, you and I, and one story alone....It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.

In order to gain anything, you must first lose everything

The hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions; you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.

I come alive when there is a chance to learn or do something different.

It can be scary to find out you've been wrong about something but we can't be afraid to change our minds, to accept that things are different, that they'll never be the same, for better or for worse. We have to be willing to give up what we used to believe. The more we're willing to accept what is and not what we thought, we'll find ourselves exactly where we belong.

Don't get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water.

Life will not always change, so we must be willing to change.