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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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Ann Beattie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 8
Novelist
Professor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Rocks
Story
Outline
Stories
Crossing
Writing
Crossings
Work
Outlines
Like
Stream
Streams
Rock

More quotes by Ann Beattie

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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
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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.
Ann Beattie
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the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Ann Beattie
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Clichés so often befall vain people.
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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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.
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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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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Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
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I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
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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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
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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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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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It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
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've spent my life supporting myself.
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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You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie