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It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Human
Humans
Work
Struck
Dealing
Awful
Beings

More quotes by 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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We stay in the house so much because I am waiting for the telephone. I seem to be back in my teens, a period I thought I would never have to endure again: my life is spent hoping for things that only someone else can bring about.
Anne Tyler
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I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
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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I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.
Anne Tyler
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People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
Anne Tyler
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Try Jesus, you won't regret it, a billboard read.
Anne Tyler
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Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
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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
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Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
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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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
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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
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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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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
Anne Tyler
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While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
Anne Tyler
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... everyone must play his role.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.
Anne Tyler