Anne Tyler Quotes

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!

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

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.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

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.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.

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.

In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them

Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.

It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.

Once your mind is caught on the right snag, there's nothing so hard about the mechanics of writing.

There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.

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

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.

Just because we're related doesn't mean we are any good at understanding each other.

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')

...he thought of dying as a kind of adventure, something new that he hadn't yet experienced. Like an unusual vacation trip.

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

I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.

But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

When you have children, you're obligated to live.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

My stories are never quite good enough

(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

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

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.

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

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.

If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.

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.

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.

I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get

Point of view is not something I consciously decide. Almost always, when I come up with a plot I find that the point of view has automatically arrived with it, part and parcel of the story.

...it's closeness that does you in. Never get too close to people, son.

It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.

The very thing that attracts you to someone can end up putting you off.

... everyone must play his role.

How plotless real life was!

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.

I don't type [when I write] because . . . I often have the feeling that everything flows directly from my right hand.