Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way.\u00c2\u00a0 What now is not just a panic-stricken question tossed out into a dark unknown.\u00c2\u00a0 What now can also be our joy.\u00c2\u00a0 It is a declaration of possibility, of promise, of chance.\u00c2\u00a0 It acknowledges that our future is open, that we may well do more than anyone expected of us, that at every point in our development we are still striving to grow.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s a time in our lives when we all crave the answers.\u00c2\u00a0 It seems terrifying not to know what’s coming next.\u00c2\u00a0 But there is another time, a better time, when we see our lives as a series of choices, and What now represents our excitement and our future, the very vitality of life.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s up to you to choose a life that will keep expanding.\u00c2\u00a0 It takes discipline to remain curious; it takes work to be open to the world — but oh my friends, what noble and glorious work it is.<\/p>\n
— Ann Patchett, What Now? <\/em>p. 76-78<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing.\u00c2\u00a0 The secret is finding the balance between going out to get what you want and being open to the thing that actually winds up coming your way.\u00c2\u00a0 What now is not just a panic-stricken question tossed out into a dark unknown.\u00c2\u00a0 What […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-joy","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}