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Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Right
Hard
Writing
Mind
Snag
Mechanics
Mechanic
Caught
Nothing

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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.
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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
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It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
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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.
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I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.
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There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.
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I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at
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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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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.
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I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
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She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.
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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
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I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
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He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
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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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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 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?
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And she thought what a clean, simple life she would have led if it weren't for love.
Anne Tyler