Quotes from Anne Tyler

The trouble with discarding bad memories was that evidently the good ones went with them

Si je devais attendre d'avoir envie, je n'écrirais jamais.

And Saturday night they come over and he's polite as can be all evening. And Sunday morning he walks out, and him and her move in together.

When Bitsy looked back on Jin-Ho's arrival, it didn't seem like a first meeting. It seemed that Jin-Ho had been traveling toward them all along and Bitsy's barrenness had been part of the plan, foreordained so that they could have their true daughter.

I didn't quite understand about last night," he said. "What was that? Can we talk about it?" His voice was meek but pushy, Willa thought, and she didn't feel like answering him, but she knew he would keep on pressing her until she did. So she shrugged again and said, "I was just overtired, I guess.

She didn't even know if she liked them, in fact, and perhaps she didn't like them, but by now it hardly mattered because how would she ever start over with somebody new, at this point?

Oh," he said. That seemed to satisfy him. At least, he didn't ask anything more. In the silence that followed, Willa's eyes met her sister's, and the two of them exchanged a long, stunned, stricken gaze.

He thought of how it would be if his father returned some time in he future, when Cody was a man. Look at what I've accomplished, Cody would tell him. Notice where I've got to, how far I've come without you. Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Was it something I didn't do, that made you go away?

level where

best cure for grief was shopping, especially for things to wear.

he thought now that his mother's staunch sprightliness had been braver than he had appreciated in his youth. (Last summer, laid up for a week with a wrenched back, he had suddenly wondered how Bee had endured the chronic pain of her arthritis all those years. He suspected that had taken a good deal more strength than the brief, flashy acts of valor you see in the movies.)

she was old, she would have total confidence, finally. But look at her: still uncertain.

She would have made a better mother, perhaps, if she hadn't remembered so well how it felt to be a child.

Marriage was often a matter of dexterity, in Willa's experience.

Some kids are raised in a mess, Ada said, and they say, 'When I'm on my own, I'll be neater than God.' Others are raised in a mess and they say, 'Life is a mess, looks like, and that's just the way it is.' It's got nothing to do with their upbringing.

because a longtime family joke was how Pauline put so much stock in marking occasions with gifts. Pauline made a shooing gesture with one hand (people tended to exaggerate her character, she felt), and Karen went on. "Mom, Dad, this is from all of us. We wanted to give you something to remind you of these past thirty years." And she took the package from George

Willa made sure to keep a rapt expression on her face so the stewardess wouldn't feel ignored.

This is a gun," he said quietly, "and it's loaded. Move and I shoot. You're not allowed out of your seat, and neither is he.

She felt a lot less grateful to Derek now than she had when they were on the plane.

Men just generated wires and cords and electrical tape everywhere they went, somehow. They might not even be aware of it.

Except for an occassional Sunday, they don't make days like they used to. I mean they don't make them whole anymore..........Days seem to come in pieces now. They used to be in blocks-all one solid color to them.

You know we can't depend on Denny in any permanent way, Amanda told Nora, for instance. He might promise us the moon, but one day he'll up and leave us. I'm surprised he's lasted that long.

All those years when I was a child, longing for it to be 'my turn,' it hadn't ever occurred to me that my turn would be over, by and by.

But what if it's someone who's not our type? Someone who wears the back of her collar up or something?'