Ann Patchett

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.

Writing is an amazing place to hide, to go into the rabbit hole, and pull the trap door down over your head.

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.

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.

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.

In my experience, surgeons tend to need boatloads of attention.

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.

In my life, I have met astonishingly good people.

I have been shown so much kindness in my life, so for me to write books about good, kind people seems completely natural.

Anyone who doesn't read doesn't have any business writing.

I'm disappointed by well-written novels that only deal with two or three people.