# The Love of My Life (and Why I Need to Share It with You) | Ann Patchett | TED ## Метаданные - **Канал:** TED - **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBx86QE4k3s - **Дата:** 09.06.2026 - **Длительность:** 14:53 - **Просмотры:** 2,935 ## Описание If you want to live in a world where people read, novelist Ann Patchett has news for you: it's your job to help create that reality. Tracing her path from a chance airport encounter through a career writing iconic novels and opening a beloved independent bookstore, she makes the case that reading isn't a private pleasure but a civic act that builds empathy, sustains a "long-format brain" and pulls people out of isolation. Ready to lose yourself in a book? (Recorded at TED2026 on April 16, 2026) Join us in person at a TED conference: https://tedtalks.social/events Become a TED Member to support our mission: https://ted.com/membership Subscribe to a TED newsletter: https://ted.com/newsletters Follow TED! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ted LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ted-conferences TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tedtoks Facebook: https://facebook.com/TED X: https://www.twitter.com/TEDTalks The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less) — plus originals, podcasts and exclusive content. Look for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design as well as science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit https://TED.com for our entire library, transcripts, translations and personalized recommendations. Watch more: https://go.ted.com/annpatchett https://youtu.be/lBx86QE4k3s TED videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with the TED Talks Usage Policy: https://www.ted.com/about/our-organization/our-policies-terms/ted-talks-usage-policy. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), submit a request at https://media-requests.ted.com #TED #TEDTalks #Writing ## Содержание ### [0:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBx86QE4k3s) Segment 1 (00:00 - 05:00) I had just turned 22 when I finished my first semester of graduate school at the Iowa Writer Workshop. I was also taking classes in the printmaking program, ambitious young artloving 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 plan 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 rim 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 look 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 [snorts] 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 Hari 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 carryons. When Hari Krishna's 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 2 hours delayed until I reached the gate. The Hari 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 Hari 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 all human beings. And what the Hari 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 ### [5:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBx86QE4k3s&t=300s) Segment 2 (05:00 - 10:00) thing he had ever known. And he wanted to share it. When I finally made it home to Nashville, I told this story to everyone. In fact, I told it for years. Two hours in an airport with a Hari Krishna. But as I got older, I could see myself becoming that Hari Krishna, wanting to testify about the greatest love in my life, which is reading. So great is my need to share this love that it outweighs my significant need for privacy. I gave up printmaking when I left Iowa, but books have been my steadfast companions, my solace, my teachers, my joy. I can't imagine what life would be without reading. And so, pretty much every day in every situation I find myself in, I'm out there sharing the good news. For a long time, my love for books was more cloistered, less zealot. But in 2011, all of that changed. The two major bookstores in Nashville closed. And after waiting around for someone else to open a bookstore, I decided to do it myself. This was not the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. It was more like irritation. People love to tell me that bookstores are dead, that books themselves are hobbling towards the dust heap of cultural irrelevance. Heresy, I say books are the rock on which I built my church. Like the Hari Krishna, I didn't do this because of what I needed. I had books. I would always have books. I fought for books because you need them. The summer before we opened Parnasses Books, I went on tour. I've been going on tour regularly since 1992. This one for a novel I wrote called State of Wonder was going to be my factf finding mission. I collected information from all the book sellers I knew, but the most valuable came from my friend Daniel Golden at Boswell Books in Milwaukee. He told me people were desperate to buy anything that was hanging from the ceiling, which is true. More importantly, he told me to put the children's section as far away from the front door as possible so that when a child makes a break for it, you have the maximum opportunity to catch her. Daniel talked a lot about the children's section, which was not a part of bookstores I knew much about. If you want customers, he said, you have to raise them yourself. That made sense. Small children coming to story time, being read to, learning to read themselves will grow up to be great customers. 15 years later, I can attest that this is true. We have raised up a raft of customers. But over time, this charming bit of wisdom has changed. I don't think of it as cultivating shoppers anymore. I readers. And not just for the books I write or the books I sell, but for all books. I've come to believe that if you're interested in living in a society where people read, it's also your responsibility to cultivate readers. What does that even mean? Well, reading to children the same way people read to us. You can buy books for children who are in title one schools who might not have books of their own. We do a lot of this at Parnasses. You can speak out against book banning because books are not the things ### [10:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBx86QE4k3s&t=600s) Segment 3 (10:00 - 14:00) endangering our children and speak up for teachers and librarians who are doing the jobs that they've been trained for. Also, you can just read a book. Do you wish that people read books instead of say constantly scrolling on their phones? Then read books. Do you want your children to be readers? Then model that behavior. Of course, you're going to read to them, but they also have to see you read. Like all the people who told me not to open a bookstore, you may be wondering if books are even relevant in this golden age of technology. Think of it this way. Every piece of information coming out of your computer or phone is a single thread. At any given moment, you are holding countless threads which range in quality from vital to worthless. What a novelist does is takes all of those threads and weaves them into a tapestry. Maidens, unicorns, pear trees. This is no small job, but when it's done right, the outcome is both beautiful and enduring. Novels teach us empathy by putting us into another person's life. And they define our history by showing us how we've changed and will continue to change. Think of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Now think of John Updike. And if this wasn't reason enough to love books, they also help us develop and preserve what I like to call a long format brain. The problems of the world cannot be seen one thread at a time, nor can they be solved. The ability to think with depth and complexity is greatly enhanced by reading more than 280 characters at a time. If you haven't read a novel in a while, it may feel strange at first, but stick with it. What you put in is what you'll get back. What surprised me most about owning a bookstore and practically everything about it surprises me is that it's not just books people come in for. Reading that solitary endeavor has proven to be a means of connection. Our monthly book club at Parnasses is now so large we've broken it into three sections. We also have a classics book club and a romance book club. And once a year those two groups come together to read a classic romance, most recently Pride and Prejudice. Our author events have ranged from Jeff Kenny to Percul Everett to Barbara Kingolver to RF Kuang to aa Garton to Bono. And whether it's presidential histories or mysteries, what we see is that books give people the means by which to connect. The conversations may start with books, but they go everywhere. Reading shines the light that disrupts the dark isolation so many people find themselves in. Go to your local bookstore and see what I'm talking about. Every time I change planes in O'Hare, I think about the Hari Krishna, a person I was afraid of, a person I had nothing in common with, a person whose only intention was to help me, both to find my gate and to find a force in the world greater than myself. Through experience, we had both come to see that we were part of the larger human fabric. He through his faith and me through a different kind of faith. Maybe this time we would sit at the gate a little bit longer and I would ask him what he was reading. I would tell him how much I admired the courage of his convictions. I would thank him for helping me find my way. --- *Источник: https://ekstraktznaniy.ru/video/52918*