Whistler Quotes

“There is so much randomness to youth. The person assigned to share your room becomes your friend, the girl you pass on your way out the door becomes your wife, and from these random encounters our entire lives are built,”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Once we’re comfortable with death, we’ll do a better job with our lives.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“She would say it was because childhood never leaves us. We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock. We dry and sand and paint, but the pocket of history remains, and sooner or later someone always winds up tapping on the wall, commenting on the way it sounds strangely hollow in there, and then the whole thing comes tumbling down.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Our parents,” Leda said, “did not depend on us for their sense of identity. They had their lives and we had ours. Bless them.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“People are art,” he said. “It’s enough to just watch the people.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“It’s an awful business, loving another person.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“The children you should worry about are the ones who are the singular light of their parents’ lives, the ones who hit thirty and are still calling their mom five times a day.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Oh, Duck,” he said. “I’ll die, and so will you. I promise to go first and check it all out, make sure things look good up ahead.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“We write each other notes, back and forth, back and forth. It’s like texting for people with large collections of stationery.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Line up all the daughters in the world," Eddie said to the ambulance men. "You're never going to find a girl as good as this one.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“We were loved, not passionately but enough, and we were largely ignored, which allowed for our healthy separation from the primary family. Necessity made us resourceful and brave. We were left to solve our own problems and so we did. The children you should worry about are the ones who are the singular light of their parents’ lives, the ones who hit thirty and are still calling their mom five times a day.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“It is,” I said, and for the first time in a long time, I remembered that I loved her, or more precisely, I remembered she was a person who had lived her own autonomous life full of mistakes and disappointments and judgments and thwarted love.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“People have no understanding of how love works,” Eddie said. “They don’t take gratitude into account.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“You get to be a certain age and you realize that time isn't stretching out forever.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Looking at those books now, the person I most wanted to read them to was Lucas himself: While a positive attitude yields positive outcomes, life’s deepest joys come not from those outcomes but from the practice of a positive lifestyle. Gratitude is the garden in which the flowers of positivity bloom. Look around right this minute. What are you grateful for? Make a list, starting with your health. If you’re not in good health, focus on what is working, because something in you is thriving: your eyes, your heart, your hands. Pick one thing and spend an entire minute feeling a sense of wonder for what you’ve been given. Next, think of a person you’re grateful for. Maybe it’s a child, a parent, a spouse. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it was your third grade teacher. Mine was Mrs. Smithson, who picked up leaves on her way to school. Every day she found new leaves, even if it meant taking a longer route, and the wonder she felt at the sight of those leaves spread to every student in the class.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“because childhood never leaves us. We seal the room up and cover it in sheetrock.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“You lived, both of you. What sort of better ending are you looking for?”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“People have no understanding of how love works,” Eddie said. “They don’t take gratitude into account. They don’t think about relief.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Positivity meant solving the problems. Solving them and letting them go. Or it meant not solving the problems but coexisting with them peacefully.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Always get married in May—it ensured anniversaries full of peonies and ranunculus and anemones.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“How do we talk about death but to lie about it?”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“So by practicing nonattachment and recognizing impermanence, we might have a happier life, and we might have an easier death.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Your mother and I both have a small shard of glass in our hearts where the other is concerned: her disappointment, my shame, her regret and my regret. This helps to pry it loose. All these years later, you can still pry something loose. There’s no sense carrying shame and regret into the next life.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Dad always says he was prepared for everything in life except Mom.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“she was a person who had lived her own autonomous life full of mistakes and disappointments and judgments and thwarted love.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“For me the past was a sinkhole. Not that it was terrible, but there was nothing for me there.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“a”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“And with that I bowed my head and covered my face. I hadn’t known there was something in me to break”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Our mother, who had annoyed me deeply throughout most of my life, managed something so heroic that there should have been songs written about her to be sung around campfires by Girl Scouts.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“We were loved, not passionately but enough, and we were largely ignored, which allowed for our healthy separation from the primary family. Necessity made us resourceful and brave. We were left to solve our own problems and so we did.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler