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I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Born
Book
Real
Reasonable
Much
Impression
Way
Ways
Think
Books
Thinking
Happened
Life
Interesting

More quotes by 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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...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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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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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.
Anne Tyler
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Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.
Anne Tyler
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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
Anne Tyler
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He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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How plotless real life was!
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
Anne Tyler
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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.
Anne Tyler
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
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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...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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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.
Anne Tyler
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One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')
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.
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