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They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong they pass each other and keep running.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Like
Holding
People
Aim
Pass
Meet
Arms
Wrong
Running
Keep

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Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.
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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
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Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
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I spend about a year between novels
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I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
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It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
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Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.
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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.
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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.
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It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away
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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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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.
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He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
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View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.
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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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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.
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I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
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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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But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.
Anne Tyler