Quotes from Anne Tyler

And she thought what a clean, simple life she would have led if it weren't for love.

I can never tell ahead of time which book will give me trouble - some balk every step of the way, others seem to write themselves - but certainly the mechanics of writing, finding the time and the psychic space, are easier now that my children are grown.

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.

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.

He honestly believed, for an instant, that what he'd heard was music-a tune piped, a burble of notes, a little scrap of melody floating by on wind and breaking his heart.

I love to think about chance - about how one little overheard word, one pebble in a shoe, can change the universe.

I didn't really choose to write; I more or less fell into it.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

I suspect that marriage is like parenthood: every last one of us is an amateur at it.

My decision to start a new one is just that, a decision, since I never get inspirations.

I do write long, long character notes - family background, history, details of appearance - much more than will ever appear in the novel. I think this is what lifts a book from that early calculated, artificial stage.

My family can always tell when I'm well into a novel because the meals get very crummy.

I spend about a year between novels.

I save the best of myself for novels, and I believe it shows.

View your burden as a gift. It's the theme that has been given you to work with. Accept that and lean into it.

I was standing in the schoolyard waiting for a child when another mother came up to me. Have you found work yet? she asked. Or are you still just writing?

None of my own experiences ever finds its way into my work. However, the stages of my life - motherhood, middle age, etc. - often influence my subject matter.

She worded it a bit strongly, but I do find myself more and more struck by the differences between the sexes. To put it another way: All marriages are mixed marriages.

For my own family, I would always choose the makeshift, surrogate family formed by various characters unrelated by blood.

I've always enjoyed studying the small clues that indicate a particular class level.

Odd how clear it suddenly became, once a person had died, that the body was the very least of him.

Something was wrong with a world where people came and went so easily.

It seems to me that since I've had children I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while but when I did write I had more of a self to speak from.