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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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Ann Beattie
Age: 77
Born: 1947
Born: September 8
Novelist
Professor
Short Story Writer
Writer
Washington
District of Columbia
Love
Thought
Songs
Think
Part
Boys
Thinking
Used
Name
Music
Went
People
Different
Came
Fourteen
Years
Names
Dancing
Really
Song
Summer
Way
Culture
Exactly

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Nobody can assume that, to a writer, everything is off-limits.
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I don't even correct people when they mispronounce my name now.
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Whatever one intends, the work takes on a life of its own.
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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.
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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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Clichés so often befall vain people.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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the real killer was when you married the wrong person but had the right children.
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The admiration of another writer’s work is almost in inverse proportion to similarities in style.
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Falling in Place was meant to be very much rooted in a place and time, and music was a part of that.
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It's gratifying that it does I love to give readings.
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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.
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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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I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.
Ann Beattie