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The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.

Ann Beattie

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Ann Beattie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 8
Novelist
Professor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Work
Similarities
Similarity
Admiration
Proportion
Writer
Style
Almost
Another
Inverse

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
Ann Beattie
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It seems to me that the problem with diaries, and the reason that most of them are so boring, is that every day we vacillate between examining our hangnails and speculating on cosmic order.
Ann Beattie
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I like a lot of Margaret Atwood, I like much of Alice Munro. Again, if you were to ask me about male writers, there's often a novel I admire, but not all of their works.
Ann Beattie
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Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
Ann Beattie
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While I would agree that I write about serious subjects, and that they're not necessarily the most pleasant subjects or even the most pleasant people, as a writer I just think about the humorous aspects of these things - that's what keeps me going when I'm writing a story.
Ann Beattie
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Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
Ann Beattie
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Clichés so often befall vain people.
Ann Beattie
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I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
Ann Beattie
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I don't write about things that I have the answers to or things that are very close to home. It just wouldn't be any adventure. It wouldn't have any vitality.
Ann Beattie
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Because I don’t work with an outline, writing a story is like crossing a stream, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock, now I’m on this rock.
Ann Beattie
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If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
Ann Beattie
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It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Ann Beattie
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I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
Ann Beattie
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Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
Ann Beattie
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Quite often my narrator or protagonist may be a man, but I'm not sure he's the more interesting character, or if the more complex character isn't the woman.
Ann Beattie
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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
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I've spent my life supporting myself.
Ann Beattie
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When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days.
Ann Beattie
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I am not alone in bearing grudges against reviewers who have doomed a book's chances because they've missed the point, the tone, everything.
Ann Beattie