Quotes from Anne Tyler

serious. She'd been frantic. Over his crib she had

And most of all, most emphatically of all, they hated how her favorite means of connecting was commiseration. "Oh, poor you!" she would say. "You're looking so tired!" Or "You must be feeling so lonely!" Other people showed love by offering compliments; Abby offered pity. It was not an attractive quality, in her children's opinion.

He was perfect, was how she'd put it to herself. And then that clear-eyed, calm-faced boy would shine forth from Red's sags and wrinkles, from his crumpled eyelids and hollowed cheeks and the two deep crevices bracketing his mouth and just his general obtuseness, his stubbornness, his infuriating belief that simple cold logic could solve all life's problems, and she would feel unspeakably lucky to have ended up with him.

For once, the tears wouldn't come. She saw that Michael might have been right. It really could be too cold to snow.

with your family, if with no one else, you have to keep on trying.

Why! he always thought to himself. What was that little redhead doing by the side of

Pianists, Matthew thought, are the ones that get arthritis, and artists go blind and composers go deaf. And his mother, who pulled all the family strings by words alone, was reduced to stammering and to letting others finish her sentences.

In fact Alice was surprised to hear that her father had even noticed whether David went into the water or not, because he and Bentley liked to stand waist-deep with their arms folded across their chests and talk about sewage or something.

Just once he'd like to see a hero like himself—not a quitter, but a man who did face facts and give up gracefully when pushing onward was foolish. He

To him it was a cinch, figuring out directions, but Willa seemed to be lacking that particular part of her brain. And the GPS on her phone was no help, because it didn't let her see more than two inches ahead; and anyhow she hated driving, and she especially hated driving

a car that wasn't familiar to her.

Artists! They were all crazy. In a good way, of course.

the quality you marry a person for will end up being what you hate them for, most often.

It's everything. I hate the heat; I hate the humidity; the accent is atrocious…I don't know what we're doing here." "Well, sweetheart? We're just helping Denise for a few days." "We don't even know Denise!

Even the simplest interaction racked him with anxiety. He was always missing cues, it seemed. And yet Mercy loved him. He had never asked her why; he was afraid that if she reflected too deeply, she would realize her mistake. He just kept the thought close to his chest, and polished it and cherished it as he had since the day she had said yes to him: Mercy loves me.

Not only had she paid him attention, but she had secretly taken more pleasure in him than in any of the others.

I feel the place is falling apart on me, but Mrs. Scarlatti says not to worry. It always looks like that, she says. Life is a continual shoring up, she says, against one thing and another just eroding and crumbling away. I'm beginning to think she's right.

But my family's passing came so sudden. Left me strap-hanging in empty space, like.

Who said, 'You're only ever as happy as your least happy child?' Ã¢â'¬Â she'd asked Ree in last week's pottery class. "Socrates," Ree answered promptly. "Really? I was thinking more along the lines of Michelle Obama.

Didn't it often happen, she thought, that aged parents die exactly at the moment when other people (your husband, your adolescent children) have stopped being thrilled to see you coming? But a parent is always thrilled, always dwells so lovingly on your face as you are speaking. One of life's many ironies.

In a way," I told Peggy, "it's like the grief has been covered over with some

Sometimes people live first one life and then another life

What if heaven is just a vast consciousness that the dead return to? And their assignment is to report on the experiences they collected during their time on earth. The

Oh, my. I guess it's true what they say about how you have to skip a generation to appreciate some of your relatives.