You can't be a good person when you're writing and a bad person to your husband or a bad friend. You can't be a jerk in order to be a good writer. You can't say, "I'm too busy writing to be political." You are one person. You are the same person in every aspect of your life, and you have to be a responsible person in every aspect of your life.
Ann PatchettI tend to keep my ideas in my head. When I write something down in a notebook it's never centralized. There are too many notebooks floating around, but maybe that's a good thing.
Ann PatchettI decided to make my living as a magazine writer. And I found that it was really easy and fun.
Ann Patchett