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

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Like
Waited
Till
Literature
Write
Felt
Writing
Never

More quotes by 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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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.
Anne Tyler
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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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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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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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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
Anne Tyler
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... everyone must play his role.
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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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
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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People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
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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(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
Anne Tyler
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I'm falling into disrepair
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 didn't really choose to write I more or less fell into it.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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One 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 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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I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
Anne Tyler