Quotes By Anne Tyler

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.

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.

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.

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 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'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?

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.

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.

When I read, I'm purely a reader.

I'm too shy for personal appearances, and I've found out that anytime I talk about my writing, I can't do any writing for many weeks afterward.

I didn't really choose to write; I more or less fell into it.

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

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

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.

For me, writing something down was the only road out.

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

At most I'll spend three or four hours daily, sometimes less.

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 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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I forget a book as soon as I finish writing it, which is not always a good thing.