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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
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
Thinking
Mysterious
Write
Writing
Things
Think
More quotes by 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 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
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
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
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
People forget years and remember moments.
Ann Beattie
I've spent my life supporting myself.
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
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
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
Any life will seem dramatic if you omit mention of most of it.
Ann Beattie
I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
Ann Beattie
the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Ann Beattie
Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
It's interesting, though, that in daily life, I think of myself as being relatively unobservant.
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
You put a character out there and you're in their power. You're in trouble if they're in yours.
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
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 that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.
Ann Beattie