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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
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
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
I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
Ann Beattie
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
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Ann Beattie
You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie
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.
Ann Beattie
I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
Ann Beattie
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
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
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.
Ann Beattie
If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
Ann Beattie
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
I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
Ann Beattie
I could name a few songs and say exactly what summer they came out and what boy I thought I was in love with when I was fourteen years old, but I think that music used to be really more a part of the culture when people went out dancing in a different way than they do now.
Ann Beattie
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.
Ann Beattie
Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
Ann Beattie
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
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