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You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.

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
Trouble
Power
Character

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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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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I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
Ann Beattie
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It's not about having things figured out, or about communicating with other people, trying to make them understand what you understand. It's about a chicken dinner at a drive-in. A soft pillow. Things that don't need explaining.
Ann Beattie
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Italics provide a wonderful advantage: you see, right away, that the words are in a rush. When something exists at a slant, you can't help but consider irony.
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 think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
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 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
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
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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People forget years and remember moments.
Ann Beattie
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Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
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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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
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It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
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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I've spent my life supporting myself.
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 even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
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the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Ann Beattie