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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

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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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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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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 wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.
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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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I write because I want to have more than one life.
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Women were the ones that held the reins, it emerged.
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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
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How plotless real life was!
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I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.
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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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Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.
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Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!
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I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.
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You think we're a family,' Cody said, turning back. 'You think we're some jolly, situation-comedy family when we're in particles, torn apart, torn all over the place, and our mother was a witch.
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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
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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.
Anne Tyler