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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 Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Used
Character
Real
Life
Expect
Characters
Literature
Free

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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I didn't really choose to write I more or less fell into it.
Anne Tyler
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It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
Anne Tyler
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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
Anne Tyler
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I 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 Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
Anne Tyler
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And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
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People 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 Tyler
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I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
Anne Tyler
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I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.
Anne Tyler
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I've always thought sleep was a wonderful invention. Not that being awake isn't nice too, of course. But when I get up in the morning, I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again ... And I never dream, because it distracts my mind from pure sleeping.
Anne Tyler
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... everyone must play his role.
Anne Tyler
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I 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 Tyler
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He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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My stories are never quite good enough
Anne Tyler
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I'm falling into disrepair
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler