Anne Tyler Quotes

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.

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For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

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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.

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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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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 never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.

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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

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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.

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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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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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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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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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.

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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.

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

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It's true that it's 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.

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

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I spend about a year between novels.

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Ever consider what they must think of us I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul- chicken, pork, half cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth

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

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

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

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