Anne Tyler Quotes

I'm falling into disrepair

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away

The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.

I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.

Mostly it's lies, writing novels. You set out to tell an untrue story and you try to make it believable, even to yourself. Which calls for details; any good lie does.

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.

She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.

...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.

Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.

He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.

(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.

Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.

But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

When I read, I'm purely a reader

They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.

Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.

I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.

Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.

And she thought what a clean, simple life she would have led if it weren't for love.

How plotless real life was!

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.

I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!

I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.

I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.

We stay in the house so much because I am waiting for the telephone. I seem to be back in my teens, a period I thought I would never have to endure again: my life is spent hoping for things that only someone else can bring about.

I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.