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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Anne Tyler

Image
Not until the final draft do I force myself to remember that I'm going to have to think about how it will affect other people.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Image
I remember leaving the hospital - thinking, 'Wait, are they going to let me just walk off with him? I don't know beans about babies! I don't have a license to do this.' We're just amateurs.
Anne Tyler
Image
I'll write maybe one long paragraph describing the events, then a page or two breaking the events into chapters, and then reams of pages delving into my characters. After that, I'm ready to begin
Anne Tyler
Image
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
Anne Tyler
Image
She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.
Anne Tyler
Image
... everyone must play his role.
Anne Tyler
Image
She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.
Anne Tyler
Image
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.
Anne Tyler
Image
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
Anne Tyler
Image
I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.
Anne Tyler
Image
He was wondering if there was some cryptic, cultish mark on his door that told all the crazy people he'd have trouble saying no.
Anne Tyler
Image
Some people are aware of everything that is going on everywhere at every moment in their lives.
Anne Tyler
Image
One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')
Anne Tyler
Image
People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
Anne Tyler
Image
I write because I want to have more than one life.
Anne Tyler
Image
I didn't really choose to write I more or less fell into it.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Anne Tyler
Image
For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.
Anne Tyler
Image
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
Anne Tyler