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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

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If you could have a book called My Favorite Six Stories, I don't think I'd have trouble doing that.
Ann Beattie
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Women are obviously much more discriminated against than men in many ways.
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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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.
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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.
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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
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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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People forget years and remember moments.
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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the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
Ann Beattie
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Clichés so often befall vain people.
Ann Beattie
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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
Ann Beattie
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What will happen can't be stopped. Aim for Grace.
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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I've spent my life supporting myself.
Ann Beattie
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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
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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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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
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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
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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