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

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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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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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People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
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Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.
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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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I write because I want to have more than one life.
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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 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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The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.
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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.
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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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No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.
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There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.
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I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get
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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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She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
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I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.
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...if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad.
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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.
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I think it must be very hard to be one of the new young writers who are urged to put themselves forward when it may be the last thing on earth they'd be good at
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