Quote

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

Anne Tyler

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Luck
Criticism
Call
Always
People
Sensibly
Acted

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Anne Tyler
Image
If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
Anne Tyler
Image
There's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
My stories are never quite good enough
Anne Tyler
Image
But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.
Anne Tyler
Image
I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
Image
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
Anne Tyler
Image
It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.
Anne Tyler