Quotes By Anne Tyler

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

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.

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.

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.

I spend about a year between novels.

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!

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

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

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.

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.

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 consciously try to end my novels at a point where I won't have to wonder about my characters ever again.

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.

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.

My stories are never quite good enough.

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?

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.