Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Ann Beattie

Image
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
Image
the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Ann Beattie
Image
Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I've spent my life supporting myself.
Ann Beattie
Image
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
Image
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
Ann Beattie
Image
It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
Ann Beattie
Image
I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
Image
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
Image
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
Image
If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
Ann Beattie
Image
I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
Image
Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
Ann Beattie
Image
Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
Image
The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
Ann Beattie
Image
What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
Ann Beattie
Image
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