Quotes from 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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Farmers are patient men. They got to be. Got to see those seeds come up week by week, fraction by fraction, and sweat it out for some days not knowing yet is it weeds or vegetables.

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

(About parenting:) ... all that tedium, broken up by little spurts of high drama.

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 wonder how many times we dream that kind of dream-something strange and illogical-and fail to realize God is trying to tell us something.

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

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

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

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

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.

One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about. (from 'Celestial Navigation')

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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!