Quotes from Anne Tyler

What nobody understood about David, with the possible exception of Greta, was that he had suffered a very serious loss in his life. Two losses, in fact. Two very dear children: Emily and Nicholas. It was true that these days there happened to be two very dear grown-ups who were also named Emily and Nicholas, but they weren't the same people. It was just as if those children had died. He'd been in mourning ever since.

said, 'Many of your fellow members probably don't believe, either, but at least in church you put yourself in position for belief. Otherwise you reduce the possibility.' " "Good point," Willa said thoughtfully. "Yes, it was a good point. But I'd given it sixty-some years by then and I figured any further developments were unlikely.

When she was a child she used to imagine that her mother might painlessly die somehow and her father would marry a lovely, serene woman who would sit at Willa's bedside when she had a bad dream and lay a cool palm on her forehead.

Since she was a scrappy little Hampden girl whose father owned one of those hardware stores where you walk in off the street and say, 'Oh, my God! I'm so sorry! I seem to be in somebody's basement!' Shovels and rakes and wheelbarrows crowded up close together, coils of rope and lengths of chain hanging down from this really low ceiling you could practically bump your head on, and a tabby cat sound asleep on a sack of grass seed.

I will never forgive you for consuming every last little drop of our parents' attention and leaving nothing for the rest of us.

I broke my days into separate moments," he said. "See, it's true I didn't have any more to look forward to. But on the other hand, there were these individual moments that I could still appreciate. Like drinking that first cup of coffee in the morning. Working on something fine in my workshop. Watching a baseball game on TV.

Everything was harried and nightmarish and yet the same small practical things were going on at the same time.

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

However different the two might be in other ways, they both had this notion that reading up on something, getting equipped for something, would put them in control.

I'm Carl Dexter," he said.

I mean, if you catalogue grudges, anything looks bad. And Cody certainly catalogues; he's ruining his life with his catalogues.

Oh, I know!" Willa said. "Who's going to believe a couple would bother divorcing if they've only developed different hobbies or something?

She reminded herself of the day she had fallen in love with him. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon," she'd begin, and it would all come back to her—the newness of it, the whole new world magically opening before her at the moment when she first realized that this person that she'd barely noticed all these years was, in fact, a treasure.

At night she still woke up, she still mulled and worried and reflected and regretted, but after an hour or so now she would drift back into sleep, and by morning she felt well rested. She felt more or less normal, in fact.

And time... Well you know about time. How slow it is when you're little and how it speeds up faster and faster once you're grown. Well now it's just a blur. I can't keep track of it anymore! But it's like time is sort of balanced. We're young for such a small fraction of our lives, and yet our youth seems to stretch on forever. Then we're old for years and years, but time flies by fastest then. So it all comes out equal in the end don't you see.

For the first time Mercy wondered if certain birds were famous among other birds for their distinctive flying style—if they took pride in executing a particularly graceful arc or a breathtaking swoop as the others watched admiringly.

So, this is how it works," she said. "This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses.

They knew all about Jin-Ho because Jin-Ho's mother had telephoned two weeks after the babies' arrival. "I hope you don't mind my tracking you down," she'd said. "You're the only Yazdans in the book and I just couldn't resist calling you to find out how things were going." Jin-Ho, it seemed, was doing marvelously.

Who said, 'You're only ever as happy as your least happy child?' 

Peter glanced up from his laptop, which he was working on now. "Have you lost your mind?" he asked her. "What?" "You're going to walk the dog alone in the dark where somebody just got shot?

I'm a roomful of broken hearts, he tells her.

Oh, that," he seemed to be saying. "Never mind that. All families have their ups and downs; let's just figure the age of this poplar.

Now, when you sit, your blood sort of sits along with you. It don't go rushing around your brain no more. Consequently, it takes that much more time to get rid of some sad idea in your mind. The process is slowed considerable. Whereas if you hurry your blood up some Ã¢â'¬Â¦ There is a sizable amount of people could benefit from what I know.

So, this is how it works," she said. "This is what families do for each other—hide a few uncomfortable truths, allow a few self-deceptions. Little kindnesses." "And little cruelties," he said. "And little cruelties," she agreed, and she swung his hand between