Anne Tyler - Life Quotes

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

Anne Tyler

I have spent so long erecting partitions around the part of me that writes — learning how to close the door on it when ordinary life intervenes, how to close the door on ordinary life when it's time to start writing again — that I'm not sure I could fit the two parts of me back together now.

Anne Tyler

I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

Anne Tyler

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.

Anne Tyler

I expect that any day now, I will have said all I have to say; I'll have used up all my characters, and then I'll be free to get on with my real life.

Anne Tyler

He wished he had inhabited more of his life, used it better, filled it fuller.

Anne Tyler

We stay in the house so much because I am waiting for the telephone. I seem to be back in my teens, a period I thought I would never have to endure again: my life is spent hoping for things that only someone else can bring about.

Anne Tyler

I write because I want more than one life; I insist on a wider selection. It's greed plain and simple. When my characters join the circus, I'm joining the circus. Although I'm happily married, I spend a great deal of my time mentally living with incompatible husbands.

Anne Tyler

There is no true life. Your true life is the one you end up with, whatever it may be. You just do the best you can with what you've got.

Anne Tyler