Quote

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

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
Writing
Sound
People
Often
Tell
Pontificating
Stories
Corny
Persons
Aware
Person
Figure
Self
Figures
Right
Story

More quotes by Ann Beattie

Image
I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie
Image
I must say also that it's never worked to my disadvantage that I have long, blond hair.
Ann Beattie
Image
the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
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 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
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
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
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
Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
Image
Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
Ann Beattie
Image
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
Image
It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
Ann Beattie
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
People forget years and remember moments.
Ann Beattie
Image
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
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
Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
Image
You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
Ann Beattie