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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.

Anne Tyler

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Anne Tyler
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: October 25
Librarian
Novelist
Short Story Writer
Writer
Minneapolis
Minnesota
Always
Mothers
People
Talked
Compared
Ability
Read
Mother
Nothing
Children
Uncanny

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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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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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My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
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I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing
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When I read, I'm purely a reader
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I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows
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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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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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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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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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Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.
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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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If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.
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People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.
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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'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
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I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.
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View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.
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I write because I want to have more than one life.
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How plotless real life was!
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