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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
Life
Expect
Characters
Literature
Free
Used
Character
Real

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
Anne Tyler
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My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne Tyler
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In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
Anne Tyler
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View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.
Anne Tyler
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Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
Anne Tyler
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When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.
Anne Tyler
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But 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 Tyler
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I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
Anne Tyler
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Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
Anne Tyler
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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
Anne Tyler
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I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
Anne Tyler
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...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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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You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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It'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 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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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.
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