Life & Wisdom Quote by Ann Patchett

Patchett is skewering the comforting myth that taste is a ladder you climb toward “better” art. The line lands because it’s structured like a confession and a complaint at the same time: adulthood, supposedly the era of discernment, is revealed as the era of distraction. You can finally access the canon, you can even recognize “brilliance,” and still your brain slides immediately to dinner plans. That deflation is the point. She’s not insulting serious cinema; she’s puncturing the idea that seriousness automatically equals impact.

The subtext is about timing, not quality. Jaws becomes shorthand for the kind of early, sensory imprinting art can do when your defenses are low and your imagination is pliable. It’s a film famous for engineering bodily reaction, and Patchett treats that reaction as a legitimate aesthetic credential: the work that rewires your nervous system at eight may outlast the work you “respect” at forty.

Then comes the sly, self-aware punchline: “If only my parents…” followed by “but no.” It reads like a half-joke about cultural capital and a half-lament about the randomness of what forms us. She’s acknowledging the aspirational fantasy of being raised on Kurosawa - the prestige origin story - while also admitting that personality is shaped by whatever actually gets into the house. The intent isn’t to defend blockbuster nostalgia; it’s to argue, with novelist’s precision, that influence is messy, domestic, accidental. Taste isn’t just what you choose. It’s what got to you first.