Quotes By 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.

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.

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 spend about a year between novels.

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.