Quotes from Anne Tyler

The child didn't wake. She only nestled closer and sighed. So after all, Ezra could have put his coat beneath her head. He had missed an opportunity. It was like missing a train - or something more important, something that would never come again. There was no explanation for the grief that suddenly filled him.

People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.

He's fully aware that old age will be coming for him too, in time. Health troubles, insurance issues, all with no hope of a pension. Even now, in his forties, he has started to feel slightly less trustful of his own body. He takes more care about how he lifts things, and he gets winded sooner on his runs. A long-ago basketball injury tends to set up a kind of echo in his left ankle during sudden changes in the weather.

Of course it seemed strange without Peter, but at least she could stay out as long as she liked without worrying she was neglecting him.

There were advantages to being a girl and having nothing much expected of you.

It was typical of him that he lacked the taste to make a final exit. He spent too long at his farewells, chatting in the doorway, letting in the cold.

She was reminded of rainy days in her childhood when she would resign herself to staying in, reading or watching daytime TV, and then in the afternoon the sun would break through unexpectedly and she would think, Oh. I guess I can go outside now. Isn't that…a good thing, I guess.

Now look: Droplets of oil were dotted across the front of her best dress, over the mound of her stomach. She was clumsy and fat-stomached and she didn't even have the sense to wear an apron while she was cooking. Also she had paid way too much for this dress, sixty-four dollars at Hecht's, which would scandalize Ira if he knew. How could she have been so greedy? She dabbed at her nose with the back of her hand. Took a deep breath. Well. Anyhow.

Sifting through these layers of belongings while Ira stood mute behind her, Maggie had a sudden view of her life as circular. It forever repeated itself, and it was entirely lacking in hope.

Morris. Mercy filed the name in her memory. So many unexpected people seemed to edge into a person's life, once that person had children.

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

Sometimes Willa felt she'd spent half her life apologizing for some man's behavior. More than half her life, actually. First Derek and then Peter, forever charging ahead while Willa trailed behind picking up the pieces and excusing and explaining.

Never wear backless shoes for a social occasion.

It was beginning to get a bit cooler out, thank heaven. One thing she was never going to adjust to was how you needed constant air conditioning here. People were dependent upon it in the same way that space travelers were dependent upon their oxygen tanks. It seemed possible that if the electricity went off, they could actually die. When Willa thought about that too long, it made her feel kind of panicky.

that was what happened when you were thinking of someone: every random stranger seemed to be that someone at first glance.

You wake in the morning, you're feeling fine, but all at once you think, "Something's not right. Something's off somewhere; what is it?" And then you remember that it's your child—whichever one is unhappy. She

The thing about old girlfriends, Micah reflected, is that each one subtracts something from

Braised pork on a bed of polenta drizzled with maple syrup.

It was Serena who'd said that motherhood was much too hard and, when you got right down to it, perhaps not worth the effort.

Just think how it would look if a reader walked into a café you'd recommended and found it taken over by vegetarians.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that, and lean into it. This is the only life you'll have.

And all at once I had no one to trade looks with.

As much as he hated the travel, he loved the writing—the virtuous delights of organizing a disorganized country, stripping away the inessential and the second-rate, classifying all that remained in neat, terse paragraphs. He cribbed from other guidebooks, seizing small kernels of value and discarding the rest.

he was a party-giver." "But he never felt party-giving was really his true life," Poppy reminded her. "Well, no." "And that's where he and I differed," Poppy said. "Because I was always telling him, 'Look,' I said. 'Face it,' I said. '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,' I said.