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When I read, I'm purely a reader

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Purely
Reader
Literature
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More quotes by 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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Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.
Anne Tyler
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Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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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It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
Anne Tyler
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
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I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Anne Tyler
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He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
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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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
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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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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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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The one ironclad rule is that I have to try. I have to walk into my writing room and pick up my pen every weekday morning
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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One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')
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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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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I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
Anne Tyler