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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Ever
Early
Artificial
Book
Novel
Background
Writing
Stage
Lifts
Much
Literature
Backgrounds
Long
Family
Appear
Think
History
Appearance
Thinking
Write
Details
Character
Notes
Calculated

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.
Anne Tyler
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People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
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Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
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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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It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want more than one life I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.
Anne Tyler
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My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.
Anne Tyler
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I spend about a year between novels
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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My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne Tyler
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Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
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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Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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 love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.
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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For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.
Anne Tyler