Angela

“People are not characters, no matter how often we tell them they are; conversations are not dialogue; and the actions of our days don't add up to a plot. In life, time runs along in its sameness, but in fiction time is condensed-one action springboards into another, greater action. and effect are so much clearer in novels than in life. You might not see how everything threads together as you read along, but when you look back from the end of the story, the becomes map clear.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“As every reader knows, the social contract between you and a book you love is not complete until you can hand that book to someone else and say, Here, you’re going to love this.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“We don’t deserve anything—not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays

“Once you stop believing that it might somehow be possible to avoid hard choices about time, it gets easier to make better ones. You begin to grasp that when there’s too much to do, and there always will be, the only route to psychological freedom is to let go of the limit-denying fantasy of getting it all done and instead to focus on doing a few things that count.”
― Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals