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I write because I want to have more than one life.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Write
Writing
Life

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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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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Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
Anne Tyler
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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
Anne Tyler
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When I read, I'm purely a reader
Anne Tyler
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The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.
Anne Tyler
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How plotless real life was!
Anne Tyler
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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
Anne Tyler
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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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People imagine that missing a loved one works kind of like missing cigarettes,' he said. 'The first day is really hard but the next day is less hard and so forth, easier and easier the longer you go on. But instead it's like missing water. Every day, you notice the person's absence more.
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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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
Anne Tyler
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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.
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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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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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
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
Anne Tyler
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It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler