Quote

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
Always
Room
Test
Pieces
Dialogue
Rooms
False
Rang
Reading
Suddenly
Aloud
Words
Tests
Admired
Living
Particularly
Acid
Comes
Piece
Spokes
Writing
Writers
Spoke

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I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.
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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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I don't want to say I hear voices well, actually I do hear voices, but I don't think it's supernatural. I think it's just that when characters are given enough texture and backbone, then lo and behold, they stand on their own.
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It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.
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When I read, I'm purely a reader
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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.
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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
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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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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.
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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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But I don't think people take bad advice. They've got intuition too, you know. In fact I'd be surprised if they take any advice at all.
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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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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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I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive.
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When you have children, you're obligated to live.
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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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My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.
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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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Now peculiar scraps of knowledge were stuck to him like lint from all his jobs.
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Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.
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