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I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Suspects
Marriage
Lasts
Last
Every
Like
Amateur
Parenthood
Suspect

More quotes by 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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My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.
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’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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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
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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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
Anne Tyler
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How plotless real life was!
Anne Tyler
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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
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I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.
Anne Tyler
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There's surprisingly little difference between writing from a male angle and from a female angle, but I feel more restricted in my language when I'm writing as a male character because males tend to sound less emotionally expressive than females.
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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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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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I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Anne Tyler
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I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
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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I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
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 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