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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Couldn
Ends
Anything
Nothing
Never
Undo

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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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.
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 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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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
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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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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For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?
Anne Tyler
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(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
Anne Tyler
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I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
Anne Tyler
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It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.
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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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
Anne Tyler
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But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.
Anne Tyler
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I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.
Anne Tyler
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...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.
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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When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.
Anne Tyler