Quote

The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.

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
Someone
Thing
Attracts
Putting
Ends

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
Anne Tyler
Image
I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.
Anne Tyler
Image
Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
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
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
Image
I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.
Anne Tyler
Image
Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
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
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
Image
I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
Anne Tyler
Image
It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
Anne Tyler
Image
The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.
Anne Tyler
Image
He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
Image
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