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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
Suspect
Suspects
Marriage
Lasts
Last
Every
Like
Amateur
Parenthood

More quotes by Anne Tyler

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Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.
Anne Tyler
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Reading any piece of writing aloud is an acid test, particularly when it comes to dialogue. There were writers I'd always admired who suddenly rang false when I spoke their words in our living room.
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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Smells could bring a person back clearer than pictures even could.
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 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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Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.
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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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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...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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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
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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.
Anne Tyler
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When I read, I'm purely a reader
Anne Tyler
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The first-person viewpoint is more enjoyable to write, because it lets me meander more freely, and it can reveal more of the character's self-delusions. Really all the advantages are with first-person, so I'm sorry I don't get to pick and choose.
Anne Tyler
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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
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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 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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I write because I want more than one life I insist on a wider selection. It's greed, plain and simple.
Anne Tyler
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I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
Anne Tyler
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It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.
Anne Tyler