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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
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Outlines
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Stream
Streams
Rock
More quotes by Ann Beattie
Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
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.
Ann Beattie
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.
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
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
Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
Ann Beattie
Clichés so often befall vain people.
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
You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie
It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
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
Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
Ann Beattie
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Ann Beattie
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
Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
Ann Beattie
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
It's often been said that I'm an extremely depressing, cynical writer. I've never known what to make of that.
Ann Beattie
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