Quotes By Anne Tyler
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
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?
Anne Tyler
For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.
Anne Tyler
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.
Anne Tyler
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
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.
Anne Tyler
My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.
Anne Tyler
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.
Anne Tyler
While armchair travelers dream of going places, traveling armchairs dream of staying put.
Anne Tyler
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.
Anne Tyler
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!
Anne Tyler
In real life I avoid all parties altogether, but on paper I can mingle with the best of them.
Anne Tyler
I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have a superstition about examining it too closely.
Anne Tyler
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
I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.
Anne Tyler
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
Time, in general, has always been a central obsession of mine - what it does to people, how it can constitute a plot all on its own. So naturally, I am interested in old age.
Anne Tyler
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.
Anne Tyler
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.
Anne Tyler
I consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.
Anne Tyler