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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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Ann Beattie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 8
Novelist
Professor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Writer
Known
Often
Make
Never
Depressing
Cynical
Extremely

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Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
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It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
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People forget years and remember moments.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think almost always that what gets me going with a story is the atmosphere, the visual imagery, and then I people it with characters, not the other way around.
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I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
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Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson.
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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.
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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.
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Also minimalism is a term that all of us who share so little in common and who are lumped together as minimalists are not terribly happy with.
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It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
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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.
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You have to figure out who the right person is to tell the story. And often, people who are very self-aware will only sound as if they are pontificating if they tell the story.
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Much of what happens in Love Always is really from overheard conversations in the Russian Tea Room. It's an improvisation of the way certain Hollywood agents think and talk to each other.
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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.
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I've spent my life supporting myself.
Ann Beattie
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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie