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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?

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Still
Came
Children
Child
Writing
Waiting
Work
Literature
Found
Mother
Another
Standing
Stills
Asked

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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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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My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.
Anne Tyler
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
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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've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
Anne Tyler
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I've always thought sleep was a wonderful invention. Not that being awake isn't nice too, of course. But when I get up in the morning, I think, boy, only fourteen more hours and I can be back to sleep again ... And I never dream, because it distracts my mind from pure sleeping.
Anne Tyler
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And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.
Anne Tyler
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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
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People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
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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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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I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
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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It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
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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I spend about a year between novels
Anne Tyler
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While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
Anne Tyler
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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
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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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
Anne Tyler