These Precious Days: Essays

by Ann Patchett

Contrary to popular belief, love does not need understanding to thrive.

If you stop thinking about what you might want, it’s a whole lot easier to see what other people don’t have.

I was struck by how often the lessons we learn when we’re young, the things we could never imagine needing, make it possible to meet what life will ask of us later.

This is why we have to go back, because even as the text stays completely true to the writer’s intention, we readers never cease to change.