Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Writing
Pick
Trying
Picks
Every
Rule
Walk
Weekday
Room
Ironclad
Rooms
Ironclads
Walks
Weekdays
Morning
Pens

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.
Anne Tyler
Image
Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
Anne Tyler
Image
It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
Anne Tyler
Image
In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
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
Image
My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne Tyler
Image
It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.
Anne Tyler
Image
For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
Anne Tyler
Image
(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
Anne Tyler
Image
It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.
Anne Tyler
Image
I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
Anne Tyler
Image
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