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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Good
Celebrate
Life
Terms
Ordinary
Mystery
Novel
Summing
Term
Strips
Away
Novels
Seems
Psychological

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.
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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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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.
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
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For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
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He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
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I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
Anne Tyler
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The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.
Anne Tyler
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I don't know what takes more courage: surviving a lifelong endurance test because you once made a promise or breaking free, disrupting all your world.
Anne Tyler
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I wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.
Anne Tyler
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Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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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...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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I don't want to say I hear voices well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.
Anne Tyler
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I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.
Anne Tyler
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
Anne Tyler
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I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin
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