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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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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Words
Tests
Admired
Living
Particularly
Acid
Comes
Piece
Spokes
Writing
Writers
Spoke
Always
Room
Test
Pieces
Dialogue
Rooms
False
Rang
Reading
Suddenly
Aloud

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.
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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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Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.
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There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.
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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.
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I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.
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Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.
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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.
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Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
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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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Isn't a memorial service meant to comfort the living?
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I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
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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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...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.
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I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?
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People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.
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It seems to me that good novels celebrate the mystery in ordinary life, and summing it all up in psychological terms strips the mystery away
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