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.

I would advise any beginning writer to write the first drafts as if no one else will ever read them - without a thought about publication - and only in the last draft to consider how the work will look from the outside.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

I've always thought a hotel ought to offer optional small animals. I mean a cat to sleep on your bed at night, or a dog of some kind to act pleased when you come in. You ever notice how a hotel room feels so lifeless?

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

She saw herself riding in the passenger seat, Sam behind the wheel. Like two of those little peg people in a toy car. Husband peg, wife peg, side by side. Facing the road and not looking at each other; for why would they need to, really, having gone beyond the visible surface long ago. No hope of admiring gazes anymore, no chance of unremitting adoration. Nothing left to show but their plain, true, homely, interior selves, which were actually much richer anyhow.

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

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

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

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')

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Sooner or later, even the sharpest pain became flattened.

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

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

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?

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

My stories are never quite good enough

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

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.