Quotes from Anne Tyler

Amanda said, "Isn't it interesting: people never seem to bring liquor when somebody dies, have you noticed? Why not a case of beer? Or a bottle of really good wine? Just these everlasting casseroles, and who eats casseroles nowadays?

Justine hated pantsuits. Whenever she saw one, she had an urge to tell the owner some scandalous fortune, loudly enough to be heard everywhere: 'The father of your next-to-last baby has run off with a cigar-smoking redhead.

Oh, Robin. She's brokenhearted. You remember how it feels." "No, I do not remember. She's fifteen years old. She's going to fall for some new boy before the week is out; you watch." "She says nobody understands her and she wants to die," Mercy told him. Then she asked, "Can I have the rest of your salad?

Thinking back on that conversation now, he began to believe that people could, in fact, be used up—could use each other up, could be of no further help to each other and maybe even do harm to each other. He began to think that who you are when you're with somebody may matter more than whether you love her. (P. 362)

The first thing I tell people is, I'm just an ordinary woman. I'm just like you, I say, I can see they don't believe me.

I don't suppose you know the password

The trouble with wide-open families was, there was something very narrow about their attitude to not-open families.

apart," Abby said. "Yes, except he could put it back

Micah let a brief pause develop and then he asked what Deemolay had been up to---her most troubled, most disruptive student. Deemolay caused chaos the instant he entered the classroom, but he lived in a car with his grandmother and Micah knew Cass had a soft spot in her heart for him. Deemolay had poked a plastic ruler into Jennaya's back at lunchtime and told her it was a switchblade. That was an interesting topic.

Each life is a kind of assignment, I believe, Eliza told her. You're given this one assigned slot each time you come to earth, this little square of experience to work through. So even if your life has been troubled, I believe, it's what you're meant to deal with on this particular go-round.

It came to her so clearly now: the stiff-armed reach out to her side with her palm facing backward, the confident expectation of some trusting little hand grabbing hers.

she wants to wait till she graduates although me, I'm thinking this summer would be good; I mean, she could finish school in California just as well as at Kinney, so I'm hoping to talk her around, but in any case

marriages have stages. They have incarnations, almost. You can be in a good marriage and you can be in a bad marriage, and they can both be the same one but just at different times.

In the dining room, the tulips had started hanging their heads over the rim of their vase as if they were admiring their own reflections in the polished tabletop.

Wasn't it odd, she said, how much younger they were than their parents had been at the very same age.

Finally Reverend Emmett asked, 'Shall we walk on?' So they did. They passed a lone man waiting at a bus stop, a shopkeeper locking up his store. Each footstep, Ian felt, led him closer to something important. He was acutely conscious all at once of motion, of flux and possibility. He felt he was an arrow - not an arrow shot by God but an arrow heading toward God, and if it took every bit of this only life he had, he believed that he would get there in the end.

The houses here had a distinctly Pennsylvanian air, Maggie thought. They were mostly tall stone rectangles, flat-faced, set close to the road, with a meager supply of narrow windows.

No couple buying wedding rings wants to be reminded that someday one of them will have to accept the other one's ring from a nurse or an undertaker.

Then he told David, in a confiding tone, "I'm scared of banana threads, too." "Banana threads. I see. Well, I can understand that," David said. He couldn't help feeling honored.

Sometimes Willa felt she'd spent half her life apologizing for some man's behavior. More than half her 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. And now

Other people showed love by offering compliments; Abby offered pity. It was not an attractive quality, in her children's opinion.

She began to have a slight feeling of panic. What am I doing here? she thought.

Walking a small child was like herding water, Michael used to think when his own children were small. Heaven only knew what they'd take into their heads to do next - dart in front of a speeding car or throw a tantrum in mid-traffic or stop to pick a soaked cigar butt out of the gutter.