Anne Tyler citations

“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.”

“It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.”

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

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

“People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.”

“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')”

“Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.”

“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.”

“People who hadn't suffered a loss yet struck me as not quite grown up.”

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

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

“When you have children, you're obligated to live.”

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

“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!”

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“I'm falling into disrepair”