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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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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
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People forget years and remember moments.
Ann Beattie
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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
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It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
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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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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Clichés so often befall vain people.
Ann Beattie
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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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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
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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
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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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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
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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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I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
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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 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
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I've spent my life supporting myself.
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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You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
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