Quotes from Anne Tyler

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.

French Braid reveals the gentle realities of family ties that constrict and those that fall apart altogether, while the daily hum of diligence and possibility reverberates in the background.

I read so that I can live more than one life in more than one place.

She loved them so much that she felt a kind of hollowness on the inner surface of her arms whenever she looked at them—an ache of longing to pull them close and hold them tight against her. The three little boys were such a clumped-together tangle, always referred to as a single unit, but Abby knew how different each was from the next.

You didn't think I was so great anymore," she said. "You started finding fault with all I said; you looked bored when I was talking; you acted like everyone else in the room was more important than I was. You had stopped properly valuing me.

Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her. She should have planned for it better, she sometimes thought. She should have made a few friends or joined a club. But she wasn't the type. It wouldn't have consoled her.

So many unexpected people seemed to edge into a person's life, once that person had children.

He was impressed that someone so old still wanted so fiercely to live.

Do not worry […] Is not important. Is only a brand of canned peaches.

Women kept the world running, really. (There was a definite difference between 'running the world' and 'keeping it running.')

Much of Macon's youth was ruled by connotations.

But what I hope for in a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

Her grandmother laughed. "Oh, hon," she said, "it's never wise to look over your shoulder." "Huh?" "Just run the race on your own, I say. Don't fret about the others." This didn't make sense, for a moment, but then it did. Candle felt as if she'd had some burden lifted from her, and she gave Mercy a grateful smile and Mercy smiled back.

In my opinion," Red said, "going to Florida for the winter is kind of like Ã¢â'¬Â¦ not paying your dues. Not standing fast for the hard part.

Consider the gene pool," she told him. "This country was settled by dissidents and malcontents and misfits and adventurers. Thorny people. They don't always follow the etiquette.

Kate wondered why they were both contemplating careers they were so unsuited for.

The only place I went wrong, he writes, was expecting things to be perfect. Abruptly, he signals for a turn, and when the light changes he heads east instead of continuing north.

I'll lose all my funding and I'll have to close the lab and drive a taxi for a living." "Heaven forbid!" Uncle Theron said in real horror, and Bunny said, "You're going to make me drop out of school and get a job, aren't you. You're going to make me go to work serving raw bloody sirloins in some steakhouse." Kate wondered why they were both contemplating careers they were so unsuited for.

He must have some Tartar in him, don't you think?" "I have no idea," Kate said. "Or is it 'Tatar.

someone who doesn't say please or thank you or smile when you'd expect him to and thinks 'How are you?' means 'How are you?' and stands too close to people when he talks and never tells them, 'I think maybe perhaps such-and-such,' but always, flat-out, 'You are wrong,' and 'This is bad,' and 'She is stupid'; no shades of gray, all black and white and 'What I say goes.'

He would always make her feel too big and too gruff and too shocking; she would forever be trying to watch her words when she was with him. He was not the kind of person who liked her true self, for better or worse.

Sometimes Rebecca thought that the whole point of having lots of daughters was, the law of averages said at least one of them might behave right at any given time.

She started to speak, but then stopped. Anything she could think of to say seemed a mistake. In fact, speech in general seemed a mistake. It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work. from Back When We Were Grownups.

If I know Mom,' she said, 'she'd have refused any surgery anyhow.' 'It's true,' Amanda said. 'Her advance directive basically asked us to put her out on an ice floe if she developed so much as a hangnail.