Top 127 Quotes & Sayings by Anne Tyler

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American novelist Anne Tyler.

Last updated on September 17, 2024.

Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published twenty-three novels, including Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant (1982), The Accidental Tourist (1985), and Breathing Lessons (1988). All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and Breathing Lessons won the prize in 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. Tyler's twentieth novel, A Spool of Blue Thread, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and Redhead By the Side of the Road was longlisted for the same award in 2020. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her "brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail", her "rigorous and artful style", and her "astute and open language."

American - Novelist | Born: October 25, 1941

Source: Wikipedia

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

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

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

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

My writing day has grown shorter as I've aged, although it seems to produce the same number of pages.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

I spend about a year between novels.

Anne Tyler

And I am interested in the fact that class is very much a factor in America, even though it's not supposed to be.

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 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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When I read, I'm purely a reader.

Anne Tyler

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

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

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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?

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

My stories are never quite good enough.

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler

It’s like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. It’s still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! I’m not sure that will ever change.

Anne Tyler

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

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

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

Anne Tyler

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

Anne Tyler

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

Anne Tyler

For me, writing something down was the only road out...I hated childhood, and spent it sitting behind a book waiting for adulthood to arrive. When I ran out of books I made up my own. At night, when I couldn't sleep, I made up stories in the dark.

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

Anne Tyler

I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get

Anne Tyler