The love of my life (and why I need to share it with you) | Ann Patchett

**Elise Hu** (0:03)
You're listening to TED Talks Daily where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. In a world that keeps pulling us away from the page, author Ann Patchett believes reading might be the most quietly radical thing we can do.

**Ann Patchett** (0:18)
The ability to really listen to another person is an essential skill for a novelist. It's an essential skill for all human beings.

**Elise Hu** (0:28)
Ann, who's the author of 16 books, is also the founder of Parnassus Books, a beloved independent bookstore in Nashville, Tennessee. In her delightful talk, she shares a love letter to reading and traces a path from a chance encounter with a Hare Krishna in a Chicago airport to a lifelong conviction that books are the invisible thread that binds us, and that protecting that thread is worth fighting for.
I was able to sit down with Ann after her talk to dig deeper. We talked about what owning a bookstore has revealed about community and third spaces, why book banning misses the point, and how to stay sane as a reader and a writer, in what some are calling a permacrisis.

**Ann Patchett** (1:10)
Reading shines the light that disrupts the dark isolation so many people find themselves in.

**Elise Hu** (1:19)
A little plug before the conversation, Ann Patchett has a new novel out today called Whistler. I'm so excited. And if you're interested in hearing more from Ann about this book, her writing practice, what it takes to craft a good story, mark your calendars for June 30th. I get to speak with Ann again, but in front of a live TED audience for our TED Talks Daily Book Club interview. To learn more and RSVP, visit go.ted.com/membership. Now on to Ann's talk and our conversation after a break.
And now, our TED Talk and conversation of the day.

**Ann Patchett** (2:04)
I had just turned 22 when I finished my first semester of graduate school at the Iowa Writers Workshop. I was also taking classes in the printmaking program, ambitious young art loving thing that I was. I had flown from Iowa City to Chicago, O'Hare, where I'd change planes and go home to Nashville for Christmas. I had my Hermes 3000 Typewriter with me, technically portable at 14 pounds, because I wrote stories. I also had a shoulder bag of zinc plates, which I planned to engrave over the break. Have you ever traveled with a bag of zinc plates? They're a lot heavier than a Typewriter. In O'Hare, I got very, very lost. I put my Typewriter down, stood there lopsided, looking at my ticket, when a young man walked up and asked me if I needed help. Time changes memory, but I remember him clearly. He had on khaki pants and a pink Oxford shirt. He had straight sandy blonde hair and wire-rimmed glasses. He looked like the young John Denver. I gave him my ticket. You are really lost, he said, and then he took my extraordinarily heavy bag from my shoulder and the typewriter from my hand and said he would walk me to my gate.
Side note, this was 1986 I was shy and I was plain. I was not the kind of girl whose typewriter was carried by men who looked like John Denver. And my heart expanded with the wonder. Together, we traversed many concourses, and I began to worry about the time. I said he shouldn't risk missing his flight so that I could make mine. That's when he told me he didn't have a flight. I asked him if he worked in the airport, and he said, yeah, sort of. He said he was a Hare Krishna.
What a beautiful world it was when you could still get lost in an airport, when zinc plates sharp as meat cleavers filled your carry-ons, when Hare Krishnas, those dancing, chanting members of a religious sect roamed freely from gate to gate.
I was terrified, but of what? That he'd kidnap me and make me a vegetarian? I was already a vegetarian.
I had to keep walking with him because he had my typewriter, and I was in love with my typewriter. In those days, there were no screens updating travelers as to departure times, so I didn't know that my flight was two hours delayed until I reached the gate. The Hare Krishna laid my burdens down and said he'd wait with me.
Would I have chosen to spend two hours in O'Hare with a Hare Krishna? No. But I lacked the courage to bolt. I decided that, given the circumstances, the only thing I could do was listen. The ability to really listen to another person is an essential skill for a novelist. It's an essential skill for all human beings. And what the Hare Krishna told me was one of the most remarkable things I had ever heard in my life. He said, imagine loving God so much that you would be willing to stand in an airport all day so that you could tell people about God's love. All day long, people rushed past him. Even after he had forsaken his traditional saffron robes to mitigate first impressions, they buried their faces in their newspapers as soon as he started to speak. And still, he kept showing up because God's love was the greatest thing he had ever known, and he wanted to share it.