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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

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

“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

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

“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

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

“I'm glad you didn't tell me that," I said, thinking of how his case for human decency had informed my life. I believed him, and by believing him, I had found it to be true.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Every teacup comes with a short documentary film:”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“and for the first time in a long time”
― 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

“expectations.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“topped by a noticeable pair of eyebrows.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Our parents,” Leda said”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“I've been reading about impermanence. That's the part about retiring that no one tells you, how you get to read any book you want to read.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

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

“All I wanted was to be one more person on this hot and anonymous sidewalk thinking about nothing at all. Except maybe Whistler. Whistler, who had exceeded everyone’s expectations.”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler

“Eddie had gone to a Buddhism seminar two weeks ago,”
― Ann Patchett, Whistler