Quote

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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Thought
Periods
Seems
Stay
Telephone
Back
Seem
Telephones
Much
Bring
Teens
Things
Waiting
Hoping
Never
House
Endure
Would
Else
Period
Life
Someone
Spent

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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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In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them
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I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
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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
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But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.
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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.
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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')
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.
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I write because I want more than one life I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.
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I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
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People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
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It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.
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I'm falling into disrepair
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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
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You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.
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