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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Novel
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More quotes by 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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... everyone must play his role.
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 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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In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
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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I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
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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
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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I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
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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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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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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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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But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.
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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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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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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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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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
Anne Tyler