I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Anne TylerI never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
Anne TylerI don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
Anne TylerBravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
Anne TylerOdd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
Anne TylerIt's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Anne TylerI don't want to say I hear voices; well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.
Anne TylerI can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
Anne TylerNo couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.
Anne TylerShe saw herself riding in the passenger seat, Sam behind the wheel. Like two of those little peg people in a toy car. Husband peg, wife peg, side by side. Facing the road and not looking at each other; for why would they need to, really, having gone beyond the visible surface long ago. No hope of admiring gazes anymore, no chance of unremitting adoration. Nothing left to show but their plain, true, homely, interior selves, which were actually much richer anyhow.
Anne TylerMy writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne TylerOne sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')
Anne TylerFor my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
Anne TylerMy cousin Roger once told me, on the eve of his third wedding, that he felt marriage was addictive. Then he corrected himself. I mean early marriage, he said. The very start of a marriage. It's like a whole new beginning. You're entirely brand-new people; you haven't made any mistakes yet. You have a new place to live and new dishes and this new kind of, like, identity, this 'we' that gets invited everywhere together now. Why, sometimes your wife will have a brand-new name, even.
Anne TylerI was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?
Anne TylerIn real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
Anne TylerI mean you're given all these lessons for the unimportant things--piano-playing, typing. You're given years and years of lessons in how to balance equations, which Lord knows you will never have to do in normal life. But how about parenthood? Or marriage, either, come to think of it. Before you can drive a car you need a state-approved course of instruction, but driving a car is nothing, nothing, compared to living day in and day out with a husband and raising up a new human being.
Anne TylerShe was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
Anne TylerThe one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning
Anne TylerSome people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
Anne TylerI have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on it when ordinary lfe intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.
Anne TylerAnd I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.
Anne TylerI think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at
Anne TylerBut what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.
Anne TylerPeople imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes,' he said. 'The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more.
Anne TylerThere's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.
Anne TylerI just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns
Anne TylerWhile armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
Anne TylerPeople always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.
Anne TylerI write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.
Anne Tyler