Quotes from Anne Tyler

Why Americans always begin inch by inch with what they say?

He had begun to have spells lately of worrying that he had died, and that everyone knew it but him.

Never, ever, under any circumstances apply lipstick while at the table.

People tended to be very spendthrift with their language, Kate had noticed. They used a lot more words than they needed to. She

Because if you're going to do someone a favor, her father used to tell her, you might as well do it graciously.

It's never too late to do what you want to do.' Remember that.

They entered Pennsylvania and the road grew smooth for a few hundred yards, like a good intention, before settling back to the old scabby, stippled surface.

Sugar's cheek was smooth and taut beneath the veil. It felt like one of these netted onions in a grocery store.

Oh, the lengths this family would go to so as not to spoil the picture of how things were supposed to be!

It is the language, maybe?" he asked. "I know the vocabulary, but still I am not capable to work the language the way I want to. There is no special word for 'you' when it is you that I am speaking to. In English there is only one 'you,' and I have to say the same 'you' to you that I would say to a stranger; I cannot express my closeness.

flossing his teeth. He couldn't go to bed without flossing his teeth. For some reason, Sarah had found this irritating. If Macon were condemned to death, she'd said once, and they told him he'd be executed by firing squad at dawn, he would no doubt still insist on flossing the night before. Macon, after thinking it over, had agreed.

Alex Barrow's broad face, with the roughened skin that gave him an air of experience. His powerful, packed, wrestler's body. The thick black fur at the base of his throat. It was wrong to call him handsome, although all the women did. Really he was almost ugly, but in a stirring, thrilling way that made her shift in her seat as she thought about him.

He'd been meaning to buy a cat anyhow, he said. (But notice how he'd used the word buy, apparently unaware that true animal lovers would not be caught dead in a pet shop.)

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.

Disaster followed disaster... the hero stuck in there, though. Macon had long ago noticed that all adventure movies had the same moral: Perseverance pays. 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 on was foolish.

that was Julian for you: reckless. A dashing sailor, a speedy driver, a frequenter of single bars, he was the kind of man who would make a purchase without consulting _Consumer Reports_.

She has. No. Plan.

It appears that he was accidentally dreaming somebody else's dream.

The thing about old girlfriends, Micah reflected, is that each one subtracts something from you. You say goodbye to your first great romance and move on to the next, but you find you have less to give to the next. A little chip of you has gone missing; you're not quite so wholly there in the new relationship. And less there in the one after that, and even less in the one after that one.

If her time had been her own, she would have worked in the garden. That always soothed her spirits.

But why you would want to catch flies, hah? Answer me that, vinegar girl.

She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.

Oh, the terrible, crushing, breath-stealing burden of people who think they own you!

I think if you knew them well enough, if you'd listened to them closely enough while they were still alive, you might be able to imagine what they would tell you even now. So the smart thing to do is, pay attention while they're living.