1. Quotes
  2. Authors
  3. Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler Quotes

Anne Tyler is an American novelist, short story writer, and literary critic. She has published 20 novels, the best known of which are Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant , The Accidental Tourist , and Breathing Lessons . All three were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with Breathing Lessons winning the prize for 1989. She has also won the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, the Ambassador Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In 2012 she was awarded The Sunday Times Award for Literary Excellence. She is recognized for her fully developed characters, her “brilliantly imagined and absolutely accurate detail,” and her “rigorous and artful style” and “astute and open language.” While many of her characters have been described as quirky or eccentric, she has managed to make them seem real through skillfully fleshing out their inner lives in great depth. Her subject in all her novels has been the American family and marriage: the boredom and exasperating irritants endured by partners, children, siblings, parents; the desire for freedom pulling against the tethers of attachments and conflicted love; the evolution over time of familial love and sense of duty. Tyler celebrates unremarkable Americans and the ordinary details of their everyday lives. Because of her style and subject matter, she has been compared to John Updike, to Jane Austen, and to Eudora Welty, among others.

✵ 25. October 1941

Works

The Amateur Marriage
Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Anne Tyler: 22 quotes0 likes

Famous Anne Tyler Quotes

“But if you never did anything you couldn't undo you'd end up doing nothing at all.”

Anne Tyler Ladder of Years

Source: Ladder of Years

“It struck her all at once that dealing with other human beings was an awful lot of work.”

Anne Tyler book Back When We Were Grownups

Source: Back When We Were Grownups

“She was good at talking with young people. She seemed to view them as interesting foreigners.”

Anne Tyler The Amateur Marriage

Source: The Amateur Marriage

“There is no sound more peaceful than rain on the roof, if you're safe asleep in someone else's house.”

Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Source: The Accidental Tourist

Anne Tyler Quotes about people

“Bravest thing about people is how they go on loving mortal beings after finding out there's such a thing as dying.”

Anne Tyler book The Tin Can Tree

Source: The Tin Can Tree

“One sad thing about this world is that the acts that take the most out of you are usually the ones that people will never know about.

(from 'Celestial Navigation')”

Anne Tyler

Anne Tyler Quotes

“I'm beginning to think that maybe it's not just how much you love someone. Maybe what matters is who you are when you're with them.”

Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Source: The Accidental Tourist

“It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.”

Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Source: The Accidental Tourist

“I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get”

Anne Tyler

“It's true that writing is a solitary occupation, but you would be surprised at how much companionship a group of imaginary characters can offer once you get to know them.”

Anne Tyler

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

Anne Tyler The Amateur Marriage

Source: The Amateur Marriage

“Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!”

Anne Tyler The Accidental Tourist

Source: The Accidental Tourist

“If I waited till I felt like writing, I'd never write at all.”

Anne Tyler

“(The unsatisfying thing about practicing restraint was that nobody knew you were practicing it.)”

Anne Tyler

Source: Vinegar Girl

“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.”

Anne Tyler

“I'm falling into disrepair”

Anne Tyler book Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Similar authors

Christopher Morley photo
Christopher Morley30
American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet None
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald411
American novelist and screenwriter None
Sinclair Lewis photo
Sinclair Lewis136
American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright None
Henri Barbusse photo
Henri Barbusse197
French novelist None
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Vladimir Nabokov193
Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor None
Erich Maria Remarque photo
Erich Maria Remarque63
German novelist None
John Galsworthy photo
John Galsworthy48
English novelist and playwright None
João Guimarães Rosa photo
João Guimarães Rosa1
Brazilian novelist None
Marcel Proust photo
Marcel Proust41
French novelist, critic, and essayist None
Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator None