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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Inhabited
Fuller
Wished
Filled
Used
Better
Life

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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I'm falling into disrepair
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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Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.
Anne Tyler
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I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin
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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The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
Anne Tyler
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...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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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Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
Anne Tyler
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
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None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.
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 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
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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
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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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I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.
Anne Tyler
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I spend about a year between novels
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
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Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.
Anne Tyler