Anne Tyler Quotes

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Anne Tyler

Profession : Novelist

Birth : October 25, 1941

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

When I'm working on something, I proceed as if no one else will ever read it.

Anne Tyler

When I read, I'm purely a reader.

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

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.

Anne Tyler

My stories are never quite good enough.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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.

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 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.

Anne Tyler

I spend about a year between novels.

Anne Tyler

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

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 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.

Anne Tyler

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

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

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

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

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