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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Memorial
Service
Meant
Comfort
Living

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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.
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I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.
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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
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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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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?
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People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
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Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.
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Liam really enjoyed a good movie. He found it restful to watch people's conversations without being expected to join in. But he always felt sort of lonesome if he didn't have someone next to him to nudge in the ribs at the good parts.
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My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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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
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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?
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People always talked about a mother's uncanny ability to read her children, but that was nothing compared to how children could read their mothers.
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They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong they pass each other and keep running.
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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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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.
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Try Jesus, you won't regret it, a billboard read.
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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It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
Anne Tyler
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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