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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Baby
Beans
Walk
Hospitality
Walks
Hospital
Waiting
License
Literature
Babies
Remember
Hospitals
Going
Leaving
Thinking
Wait
Amateurs

More quotes by 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
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Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.
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I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
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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.
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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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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
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No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.
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Everything was leveled, there were no extremes of joy or sorrow any more but only habit, routine, ancient family names and rites and customs, slow careful old people moving cautiously around furniture that had sat in the same positions for fifty years.
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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.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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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.
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Try Jesus, you won't regret it, a billboard read.
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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
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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.
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It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
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(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
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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.
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But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.
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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.
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