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For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Always
Formed
Would
Various
Characters
Choose
Blood
Makeshift
Literature
Surrogate
Family
Surrogates
Character
Unrelated

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.
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It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
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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.
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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
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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.
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
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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.
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
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I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.
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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.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
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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.
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The 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
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I 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.
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My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.
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