from: Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

“Most of the time, we're loved for what we can do rather than for who we are. It's not such a bad thing, being loved for what you can do.'
'But the other is better.'
'Better. I hate to say better, but it is. If someone loves you for what you can do then it's flattering, but why do you love them? If someone loves you for who you are then they have to know you, which means you have to know them.” 

  -- Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

Ann Patchett, State of Wonder, Excerpts

"A memorial service. You call it a memorial service when you don't have a body"

...

"Hope is a terrible thing, you know. I don't know who decided to package hope as a virtue because it's not. It's a plague. Hope is like walking around with a fishhook in your mouth and somebody just keeps pulling it and pulling it. Everybody thinks I'm a train wreck because Anders is dead but it's really so much worse than that. I'm still hoping that this Dr. Swenson, for some reason I couldn't possibly put together, has lied about everything, that she's keeping him, or she's lost him somewhere." Then Karen stopped and a sudden light of clarity came over her face and the panic fell away from her voice. "And I say that and I know it isn't true. No one would do that. But then that would mean he's dead." She put the question to Marina directly. "Is he dead?" she asked. "I just don't feel it. I would feel it, wouldn't I?" Her eyes filled up and she brushed the tears back with two fingers.

Nothing would be lovelier than a lie now, a single dose of possibility. But if Marina gave her that then she would be nothing but another fishhook in Karen Eckman's mouth. She said that Anders was dead.

From: Bel Canto, Ann Patchett

There were worse reasons to keep a person hostage. You keep someone always for what he or she is worth to you, for what you can trade her for, money or freedom or somebody else you want more. Any person can be a kind of trading chip when you find a way to hold her. So to hold someone for a song, because the thing longed for was the sound of her voice, wasn't it all the same?

...

As if music was a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.

...

Gen, in his genius for languages, was often at a loss for what to say when left with only his own words... It had occurred to him in his life that he had the soul of a machine and was only capable of motion when someone else turned the key. He was very good at working and he was very good at being by himself. Sitting alone in his apartment with books and tapes, he would pick up languages the way other men picked up women, with smooth talk and then later, passion.

...

"I'll shoot you, too, if I have to. Show me how to peel an eggplant. I've shot men over less than an eggplant."

...

He had never been so easy inside his own skin. He thought at once he had never been so alive and so much a ghost.

~ Ann Patchett, Bel Canto