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
People
Sensibly
Acted
Luck
Criticism
Call
Always

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
Image
I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
Anne Tyler
Image
I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?
Anne Tyler
Image
Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
Anne Tyler
Image
Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.
Anne Tyler
Image
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
Anne Tyler
Image
I'm falling into disrepair
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne Tyler
Image
...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.
Anne Tyler
Image
I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
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
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
But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.
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
When I read, I'm purely a reader
Anne Tyler
Image
He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
Image
I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes - learning how to close the door on it when ordinary lfe intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again - that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.
Anne Tyler
Image
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