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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
Known
Often
Make
Never
Depressing
Cynical
Extremely
Writer

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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Clichés so often befall vain people.
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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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The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
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When I lived in New York, not only did I have safety locks on the door but I had the music going, keeping the city at a distance, trying to find creative time and peace and so forth.
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I've spent my life supporting myself.
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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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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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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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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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I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
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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Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
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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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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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There is some reason, obviously, that you are drawn to your material, but the way in which you explore it might come to be quite different from what you would expect.
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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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