Ann Patchett Quotes

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

The days, months, and years eventually reveal, like a Polaroid, a clear picture of how significant events and decisions ultimately shape our lives.

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.

In every life there comes a point when you have to make a decision about how you will live.

Sometimes you make choices in life and sometimes choices make you.

Sometimes you find your path, sometimes it finds you.

The measure of a man comes down to moments, spread out like dots of pain on the canvas on life. Everything you were, everything you'll someday be, resides in the small, seemingly ordinary choices of everyday life.....Each decision seems as insignificant as a left turn on an unfamiliar road when you have no destination in mind. But the decisions accumulate until you realize one day that they've made you the man that you are.

Life is a tapestry woven by the decisions we make.

You know, in life there are only three or four fundamental decisions to make. The rest is just luck.

I embarked on my life - I didn't do anything. I don't have an explanation.

I believe life takes us where we need to be.

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

Learning what you don't want to do is pretty valuable, it may be as valuable as figuring out what it is you do want to do.

You don't have that much choice in your life, which is one of the big lessons I've learned. I was going to be a designer whether I wanted to be a designer or not.

I've always been obsessed about how people choose - or are destined - for the paths they take.

One thing I've learned: You never know where life is taking you, but it's taking you.

I think it's natural as you get to the end of your twenties to start thinking about what you could have done differently - whether they went well or whether they went terribly.

In retrospect, it seems like everything in my life led to me becoming a writer. I just didn't realise it at the time.

Life drew me and I followed it.

I'm definitely one of those people who think that everything you do leads up to the moment where you are now.

I feel like everything does happen for a reason, and I can totally look back on my career and the decisions I've made and how it sort of worked itself out.

I believe there's fate, and then you have personal choice. I believe we have the ability to change our fate.

As a person, I am totally obsessed with the choices and decisions we make in our lives and how they dictate the course of our lives. Seemingly random choices that we make end up defining everything.

I have a lot of things that I wish I had done differently given the opportunity to redo it but that would have changed everything, and I am very content with where I am today.