Quote

I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

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
Process
Writing
Examining
Never
Superstition
Think
Superstitions
Thinking
Closely
Actual
Suppose
Literature

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
I write because I want more than one life I insist on a wider selection. It’s greed, plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I’m joining the circus. Although I’m happily married, I spent a great deal of time mentally living with incompatible husbands.
Anne Tyler
Image
People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
Anne Tyler
Image
Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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 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
Anne Tyler
Image
And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
Anne Tyler
Image
She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
Anne Tyler
Image
Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
Anne Tyler